No. 996

Clam Pancakes and Fritters

Crepes et Beignets de Lucines Orangees

Break two whole eggs into a bowl, and add a pinch of white pepper; beat them thoroughly with a tablespoonful of flour and a tablespoonful of cream; stir briskly, and put into the mixture ten medium sized raw clams chopped up very fine, and with this preparation make some rather thick pancakes.

Fritters.—Place in a saucepan one gill of milk, half an ounce of butter, some cayenne pepper and nutmeg; boil the whole and three ounces of flour; dry the paste, then remove it from the fire, incorporating slowly into it two whole eggs, and finish with four spoonfuls of double cream; now add to the paste six ounces of small sized clams, drained and chopped; mix well and then take up some of the preparation with a spoon held in the right hand and using the first finger of the left hand, detach it from the spoon, and let it fall into hot frying fat; when done, drain and range the fritters on napkins.

← No. 995 Clams a la Poulette Clams No. 997 Stuffed Clams →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Two preparations from one page: a quick egg-and-clam batter cake, and a choux-paste fritter. The fritter is the more demanding of the two, and the hinge is drying the paste properly before the eggs go in.

Gill and spoonfulsA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz). Ranhofer's unqualified "spoonfuls" of cream are most likely tablespoons, which would make four of them a quarter cup, though the text does not specify. Three ounces of flour is about 2/3 cup, and half an ounce of butter is one tablespoon.
Double cream"Double cream" meant a notably rich cream rather than a product of any fixed fat content. Heavy or whipping cream is the closest supermarket equivalent; avoid anything labelled light cream, which will slacken the fritter paste.
The paste is chouxMilk, butter and flour boiled together, then dried over the heat until the mass pulls cleanly from the pan and films the bottom, is pâte à choux. Beat the eggs in one at a time off the heat and only when the paste has cooled enough not to scramble them, or the fritters will not puff.
Frying fat350–375F. Cooler and the fritters soak; hotter and the outside colours before the interior sets. The spoon-and-finger method described gives irregular quenelles that fry unevenly, so keep them small and uniform.
Clams: what and how much"Lucines orangees" appears to be Ranhofer's French label for the local hard clam. Six ounces of chopped clam meat is very roughly a dozen medium hard clams or two dozen littlenecks shucked. Drain them well; excess liquor will loosen the paste.
Cook the pancakes throughTwo eggs, a tablespoon each of flour and cream, and ten chopped clams is a very loose batter carrying a lot of raw shellfish. "Rather thick" pancakes need a moderate pan and enough time for the centre to set; do not rush them off at the point where only the surfaces have coloured.
SeasoningNeither preparation is salted, on the assumption that the clams bring their own. If the clams were rinsed, correct the seasoning by frying off a single test fritter and tasting that, not the raw paste.
YieldThe pancake mixture should make three or four small cakes, an appetizer for two. The fritter paste should yield roughly 18 to 20 walnut-sized fritters, enough for four to six as a first course.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its clam chapter is a good illustration of what the restaurant did with a cheap local ingredient: hard clams dressed in the vocabulary of the classical French kitchen. Ranhofer titles his dishes in French, so the humble hard clam becomes the lucine orangee, and the fritter is built on pate a choux - the same paste used for gougeres and beignets souffles - rather than any American batter. The technique of pushing spoonfuls of choux off with a finger into hot fat survives in the shaping of quenelles and dauphine potatoes.