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Soft Clams Flip
Remove all sandy parts, keeping nothing but perfect bodies of forty-eight very fresh soft clams, plunge in boiling water for one minute, then drain. Heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a frying pan, add clams and briskly fry two minutes. Pour in two tablespoons sherry, a tablespoon brandy and one and a half gills cream, season with half teaspoon salt, saltspoon cayenne, lightly mix and boil for three minutes. Dilute three egg yolks with two tablespoons cream, add to the clams and gently toss while heating for two minutes without boiling--the sauce must be thick and smooth--remove, take up clams with a skimmer and chop them, but not too fine, add to the sauce again with a teaspoon French mustard and gently mix. Toast to a nice golden colour six pieces of bread one-fifth inch thick by three inches square, lightly butter, then with a knife blade evenly spread prepared clams over the six pieces toast. Arrange on a dish, sprinkle a very little Parmesan cheese over, place in oven with the door open for five minutes, remove, decorate with six quarters lemon and a little parsley greens and serve.
A rich chafing-dish preparation dressed up as a savoury toast. The technique is a French egg-yolk liaison applied to New England steamers, and it stands or falls on the temperature of that final thickening.
- Never let the yolks boilOnce the diluted yolks go in, the pan must stay below a simmer — the two minutes of gentle tossing is enough to thicken. A boil scrambles the yolks and the sauce breaks into curds and clear liquid, which is hard to rescue.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of cream is 3/4 cup. A saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon; with cayenne, err on the low side.
- What "soft clams" meansSoft-shell clams, Mya arenaria — New England steamers or longnecks, not hard-shell quahogs or littlenecks. Shuck them raw or steam briefly to open, then strip the tough black sheath from the siphon and cut away the dark stomach mass, which is where the grit sits.
- Rinse in several waters"Remove all sandy parts" is doing a lot of work in one clause. Soft clams hold sand internally; a soak in salted water before shucking, then a rinse of the shucked bodies in two or three changes of cold water, is what the instruction assumes.
- French mustardDijon or a smooth Dijon-style mustard, not a coarse grain and not American yellow. It goes in off the heat, after the clams are chopped and returned, so its sharpness survives.
- The oven with the door openA period way of moderating the oven so the top just colours without cooking further. A broiler on a low setting, or a brief pass in a moderate oven, for a few minutes until the Parmesan just colours — the book gives no temperature, and the sauce must not be reheated to boiling.
- Toast dimensionsSix squares about three inches across and a shade under a quarter-inch thick. Cut them from a firm white sandwich loaf; anything airy collapses under the sauce.
- YieldSix toasts from four dozen clams — a first course or a light lunch for six, or a supper for three.
Why the dish is called a "Flip" is unclear; the name may point to the handling — clams turned briskly in butter, then tossed with an egg liaison — rather than to the hot spiced ale-and-egg drink of the same name. Filippini's International Cook Book (1906) came out of his years at Delmonico's in New York, and the recipe shows the house style plainly: an American shellfish, cheap and abundant along the northeast coast, finished with sherry, brandy, cream, egg yolks and Dijon in the manner of a French ragout, then served on toast points with lemon quarters. Soft-shell clams were long treated as poor man's food, steamed by the bucket at shore dinners; dishes like this one were how a fashionable kitchen made them respectable on a restaurant menu.