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M. a. T (Twelve clams chopped or not)
Twelve clams chopped or not ; one pint milk; three eggs; add liquor from clams; salt and pepper, and flour enough for thin batter. Fry in hot lard.
A clam fritter batter of the plainest kind, written for a cook who already knows what fritter batter should look like. The proportions are sound; the vagueness is all in the flour and the frying.
- The flour is the one real gapA pint of milk and three eggs will take somewhere in the region of two cups of flour before it reaches "thin batter" -- pourable, about the consistency of heavy cream. The amount is best judged by eye: add it gradually and stop when a spoonful drops in a ribbon rather than a lump.
- Which clamsTwelve clams in a nineteenth-century North American cookbook most likely means hard-shell clams — quahogs or the smaller cherrystones and littlenecks — though soft-shell clams were also fried in batter. Twelve chowder-size quahogs give far more meat than twelve littlenecks; aim for about a cup of chopped clam meat. "Chopped or not" may simply mean that small clams could be left whole.
- The liquorShuck over a bowl and strain the liquor through a fine sieve or cloth to catch grit and shell. It is salty, so season the batter after it goes in, not before.
- Canned clams workTwo 6.5-oz cans of chopped clams stand in for the dozen fresh, with their juice used in place of the liquor. Drain them so you can measure the liquid you are adding, or the batter will be loose.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature and does not say how deep the fat should be; modern practice for hot frying fat is around 365F. Lard fries beautifully and is still sold, but any neutral oil with a high smoke point does the same job. Fry in batches so the fat does not cool too far.
- Cooking timeTablespoon-size fritters need about 2 to 3 minutes, turning once, until deep gold. Longer will not improve the clams — they toughen quickly once the batter is set.
- YieldA pint of milk with three eggs and flour makes a large batch of small fritters, well beyond a few servings. Serve hot with lemon or a vinegar-based sauce.
The Home Cook Book belongs to the first great wave of North American charity cookbooks — collections assembled from the recipe boxes of subscribing housewives, contributions variously attributed by initials, names or place-names, and sold to fund a hospital or church. "M. A. T." is one of those barely identified contributors, and the terseness of the entry is characteristic: it is written for cooks who had made fritters a hundred times and needed only the proportions. Clam fritters themselves are an Atlantic coastal dish of long standing, generally traced to New England kitchens where shellfish were cheap and abundant enough to be batter-fried rather than saved for chowder. The "chopped or not" is a small window into the period, when clams came in whatever size the tide gave you and the cook decided on the spot.