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Fried Little Neck Clams
Roll forty-eight freshly opened fresh clams in flour, then dip in beaten egg, gently roll in cracker dust or bread crumbs, plunge in boiling fat and fry for five minutes. Lift up, drain, sprinkle a little salt over, dress on a hot dish, decorate with six quarters of lemon and serve.
A straightforward breaded fry whose only real fault is the timing. Everything else translates directly to a modern kitchen.
- Five minutes is far too longShucked little necks are small and already tender; in fat at 375F they need 60 to 90 seconds, just until the crumb coat is golden. Five minutes turns them to rubber inside a scorched crust.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not truly boil at frying temperatures; the phrase describes fat hot enough to bubble furiously the instant food hits it, which in modern terms is somewhere around 350 to 375F. Use a thermometer and fry in batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Little necksOne of the smallest market grades of the Atlantic hard clam (quahog), usually about an inch and a half to two inches across. Buy them live in the shell and shuck them yourself, or ask the fish counter to; drain them well or the flour will not stick.
- Cracker dustFinely crushed plain soda or oyster crackers, a common coating in the period and often crushed at home. Panko or dry breadcrumbs work; cracker crumbs give the sandier, crisper crust the original intends.
- Dry the clams firstBlot each clam on a towel before flouring. Shucked clams carry a good deal of liquor, and wet clams shed their coating into the fat and cloud it.
- Fry the whole clamThis is the belly-in style, not the strips cut from larger clams. The soft body cooks in seconds and is where most of the flavor sits.
- YieldForty-eight clams and six lemon quarters point to six servings as an appetizer, four as a main course.
Little neck clams take their name from Little Neck Bay, on the north shore of Long Island, which supplied the New York market heavily in the nineteenth century; the name outlived the fishery and became a size grade for hard clams generally. Fried clams belong to the same New York and New England oyster-house repertoire as fried oysters, and the flour–egg–crumb sequence given here is the standard three-stage breading of the period, applied more or less identically to oysters, scallops, soft-shell crabs and croquettes.