Clams were abundant along the U.S. east coast in the 1800s, and many of the old cookbooks included recipes for cooking them. Clams were only eaten by people who lived near where they were harvested, though. Electricity wasn’t available yet, so they couldn’t be kept long without refrigeration. 

INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS

BOILED CLAMS
Wash clean with a scrubbing-brush and put them in a kettle. Set on a good fire and leave till they are wide open. Then take them from the kettle, cut each in two or three pieces, put them in a stewpan with all the water they have disgorged in the kettle, and add about four ounces of butter for fifty clams. Boil slowly about an hour, take them from the fire, mix in two beaten eggs, and serve warm. Clams are also eaten raw with vinegar, salt, and pepper.

CLAMS À LA MARQUISE
Cook a quart of opened clams with a cup of white stock, a tablespoon of butter, and pepper and mace to season. Skim then out, drain, and slice the clams. In another saucepan, blend together a teaspoon each of butter and flour, and add one cup of the liquid from cooking the clams. Cook and stir for five minutes, thicken with the yolks of two eggs, add the clams, and reheat. Fill small individual dishes with the mixture, sprinkle with crumbs, dot with butter, and bake until brown. Sprinkle with lemon-juice just before serving.

CLAM FRITTERS
Take fifty small or twenty-five large sand clams from their shells; if large, cut each in two. Lay the clams on a thickly-folded napkin. Put a pint bowl of wheat flour into a basin, add to it three well-beaten eggs, half a pint of sweet milk* and nearly as much of their own liquor. Beat the batter until it is smooth and perfectly free from lumps, then stir in the clams. Put plenty of lard or beef fat into a thick-bottomed frying pan and let it become boiling hot. Put in the batter by the spoonful and let them fry gently. When one side is a delicate brown, turn the other. Drain on brown paper and eat warm.

*sweet milk – whole milk; it was called sweet milk to distinguish it from buttermilk.

EXCELLENT CLAM SOUP
Take forty or fifty clams and wash and scrub the outsides of the shells till they are perfectly clean. Then put them into a pot with just sufficient water to keep them from burning. The water must boil hard when you put in the clams. In about a quarter of an hour, the shells will open and the liquor will run out and mix with the water. This must be saved for the soup and strained into a soup-pot after the clams are taken out. Extract the clams from their shells and cut them up small. Then put them into the soup-pot, adding a minced onion, a saucer of finely chopped celery or a tablespoon of celery seed, a dozen blades of mace, with a dozen whole pepper-corns.

No salt, as the clam-liquor will be quite salty enough. If the liquid is not in sufficient quantity to fill a large tureen, add some milk. Thicken the soup with two large tablespoons of fresh butter rolled in flour. Let it boil a quarter of an hour. Just before you take it from the fire, stir in gradually, the beaten yolks of five eggs. Cover the bottom of the tureen with toasted bread, cut into square dice about an inch in size, and then pour in the soup.

STEWED CLAMS
Wash clean as many round clams as required. Pile them in a large iron pot with half a cup of hot water in the bottom, and put over the fire. As soon as the shells open, take out the clams, cut off the hard, uneatable “fringe” from each with strong, clean scissors, put them into a stewpan with the broth from the pot. Boil slowly till they are quite tender. Longer boiling will make the clams almost indigestible.Pepper well and thicken the gravy with flour stirred into melted butter.

SCALLOPED CLAMS
Wash clean one hundred clams. Use the soft part whole and the tough part chopped fine. Put a layer on the bottom of a buttered baking dish. Season with salt, pepper, cayenne, and a little mace, and sprinkle over plenty of stale bread crumbs and a quantity of bits of butter. Repeat the layers until the dish is full. Put plenty of butter on top and pour in a cup of the water from the clams. Bake in a moderate oven* one hour, and when half done pour in a tumbler of sherry.

*moderate oven – about 350-400 degrees Fahrenheit.

CLAM COCKTAIL
Put a dozen small clams into a cold bowl and pour over them a teaspoon each of vinegar, lemon-juice, tomato catsup, horseradish, and Worcestershire sauce. Add a little salt and a few drops of tabasco sauce. Serve very cold in small glasses.

CREAMED CLAMS
Chop fine two dozen hard clams. Make smooth in a saucepan two small spoons each of butter and flour. When they cook through, add the clams and one-half cup of the juice. Season with red pepper, simmer for ten minutes, then add the thickening and half a cup of cream. Boil up once and serve.

DEVILED CLAMS
Chop fine two dozen clams, removing the hard parts. Mix with half the quantity of bread crumbs, a teaspoon each of grated onion and parsley, and three tablespoons of melted butter. Season highly with salt and pepper, and add a few drops of Worcestershire sauce. Put into buttered clam-shells, cover with crumbs, dot with butter, and bake until brown.

CLAM BAKE
Lay the clams on a rock, edge downward, and forming a circle, cover them with fine brush. Cover the brush with dry sage, cover the sage with larger brush, and set the whole on fire. When a little more than half burnt (brush and sage), look at the clams by pulling some out. If done enough, brush the fire, cinders, etc., off. Mix some tomato sauce or catsup with the clams (minus their shells), add butter and spices to taste, and serve. Done on sand, the clams, in opening, naturally allow the sand to get in, and it is anything but pleasant for the teeth while eating them.

Image from Deposit Photos

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