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Boston Clam Stew
Open forty-eight medium, fresh clams, place in a saucepan with their liquor, one quart cold water, two saltspoons cayenne pepper and four branches celery. Set pan on fire and as soon as it comes to a boil skim scum from surface and remove celery. Add a pint hot milk and two ounces butter, mix well, pour into a soup tureen and serve with six lightly buttered slices of toasts separately.
A plain shellfish stew of the sort served in Boston hotels and oyster houses at the turn of the century. Almost everything hinges on how briefly the clams are in the pot.
- The clamsForty-eight medium clams means shucked hard-shells (quahogs) or soft-shells, perhaps 2 lb or so of shucked meat with their liquor, depending on the clam. Canned chopped clams with their juice are a reasonable substitute for about the same volume.
- Strain the liquorClam liquor carries sand. Pour it through a fine sieve or a coffee filter before it goes into the pan, or the finished stew will be gritty no matter how good the clams were.
- Timing is the whole recipeClams toughen quickly once heated; treat the boil as the signal to finish, not the start of a simmer.
- Saltspoons of cayenneA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two is half a teaspoon of cayenne in roughly six servings. That is genuinely hot by modern palates. A quarter teaspoon is the safer starting point, with more at the table.
- Branches of celeryFour branches are four ribs, used whole as an aromatic and pulled out before serving. Include a few leaves; they carry more flavour than the stalk in so short an infusion.
- The milkA pint of hot milk means scalded, not boiling. Milk held at a hard boil with salty clam liquor can curdle, so it goes in at the end, with the butter.
- Set pan on firePeriod phrasing for putting the pan over the heat. Medium-high is right; you want the pot to reach a boil quickly rather than stewing the clams slowly on the way up.
- Yield and serviceSix slices of toast tells you the intended number: six portions, served in a tureen with the toast passed separately rather than floated in the bowl.
The clam stew belongs to the same American shellfish tradition as the oyster stew that was a common feature of urban restaurant menus in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the two were often cooked in much the same fashion: shellfish warmed in their own liquor, milk and butter added, toast on the side. Boston's association with the dish is generally traced to the New England soft-shell clam, dug from tidal flats and sold cheaply through the city's markets, and to the oyster and clam saloons that traded on quick, plain service. Its brevity is characteristic of the genre: professional cooks of the period wrote for other cooks and left out anything they assumed would be obvious.