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Fruit (Acceptable first course)
An acceptable first course for a summer dinner consists of little neck clams served in a grape fruit from which the core and a little of the center have been removed. A sauce made of chopped olives, a few drops of tabasco sauce, a very little horseradish and tomato catsup is poured over them.
Barely more than a serving suggestion, but it does tell you how to assemble a dish: raw clams in a hollowed grapefruit under a sharp red sauce. The original gives no quantities at all, so the work is in setting proportions.
- Little neck clamsThe smallest market size of hard clam, about 1.5 to 2 inches across, sold live in the shell. Figure six to eight shucked clams per grapefruit half, with their liquor. They must be alive when shucked: discard any that gape and will not close when tapped.
- Sourcing raw shellfishBuy from a fishmonger who can show the shellfish tag, keep them cold, and shuck within hours of serving. Raw clams carry a real Vibrio and norovirus risk and are not appropriate for pregnant, elderly or immunocompromised diners.
- The grapefruit as vesselThe original does not say how the fruit is cut; halving it crosswise, cutting out the central core and pith, and loosening the segments with a curved knife gives a shell that will hold the clams and their juices. Grapefruit of the period included seedy, sharply acid varieties such as the Duncan; a modern Ruby Red is much sweeter, so the sauce needs more bite to balance it.
- The sauce, in proportionNo amounts are given. For two servings, roughly 3 tablespoons tomato catsup, 1 tablespoon finely chopped olives, 1 teaspoon prepared horseradish and three or four drops of Tabasco is in keeping with "a very little" and "a few drops."
- HorseradishBottled prepared horseradish, grated root in vinegar, was widely available by 1900 and is the same product sold today, though recipes of the period also called for freshly grated root. Fresh grated root is several times stronger; use half as much if that is what you have.
- TemperatureEverything should be thoroughly cold. Chill the grapefruit shells, set them on cracked ice or a bed of coarse salt to keep them upright and cool, and dress the clams at the last moment so the acid does not begin to firm them.
- YieldThe original gives no yield; if the fruit is halved it makes two first courses. Serve with a small fork or a cocktail pick, and lemon on the side if the fruit is a sweet variety.
Grapefruit arrived on American breakfast and dinner tables in earnest in the 1880s and 1890s, once Florida growers had a crop to sell and the fruit shed its reputation as an ornamental curiosity; by the turn of the century a halved grapefruit was the fashionable way to open a meal in a hotel dining room. The clam cocktail was rising at the same moment, a cold, sharply sauced first course that belonged to the same taste for something acid and bracing before the heavy courses. This entry simply collapses the two fashions into one, using the hollowed fruit as a serving cup much as scallop shells, tomato cases and orange skins were used elsewhere in books of the period. The sauce, chopped olives and catsup with horseradish and Tabasco, is essentially the same catsup-and-horseradish sauce already current at the date and still served with shellfish, Tabasco itself having been on the American market since the 1860s.