Clams and omelet. Two things that I never would have thought would go well together. When browsing the Internet for different dishes and recipes, however, I happened to fall upon this exact combination of ingredients, not once, but twice. The first recipe I found while glancing at Victor Hirtzler’s The Hotel St. Francis Cook Book, published in 1919. Hirtzler, a celebrity chef of his day, included his “omelet with soft clams” recipe as a sort of appetizer for a classy winter luncheon at the elegant San Francisco hotel.
The other recipe I found for “Clam Omelet” was a version published online on the Clam Recipes website. Even after a cursory glance, the differences between the two recipes were quite obvious. As mentioned in the articles we read for class, which noted the comparative brevity of older recipes, the Hotel St. Francis recipe was much shorter, much less descriptive, and as it was written in the second decade of the twentieth century, was probably meant for very experienced if not professional chefs and cooks. The online “Clam Omelet” recipe, on the other hand, had 124 words to Hirtzler’s 46 words, not including the list of ingredients, and very clearly spelled out step by step how to make the omelet.
Upon closer examination, the disparity between the two recipes increased, and one can see that much has changed in recipe writing over the past century. First, unlike the online article, Hirtzler does not bother to explain how to go about extracting the bellies of the clams, nor does he explain things like how to heat the clams “through”, concoct a “cream sauce”, or even “make an omelet”. Instead, he expects his readers to have that kind of basic culinary knowledge, an assumption the online version definitely does not try to make. Instead, The St. Francis Hotel’s “season with salt and pepper” direction translates into a quantifiable amount, “1 teaspoon coarse salt,” in the Clam Recipes version, and Hirtzler’s “small piece of butter” becomes “2 tablespoons unsalted butter” online.
These explicit directions, unlike in cookbooks of Hirtzler’s era, are probably intended for everyday people like myself, who may or may not have knowledge or experience with clams or omelets. With so many new and different kinds of people learning to cook and having access to novel ingredients and dishes, it simply makes sense to create recipes today in an easy to follow manner. I for one am very grateful that most modern recipes try to baby readers somewhat, following a typical pattern of a list of ingredients with the required quantities first followed after by very descriptive, numbered instructions.
In any case, both recipes sound surprisingly delicious, and for any of you out there who are curious or brave enough to try these clam and omelet concoctions, below are the two recipes for your enjoyment!
From Victor Hirtzler’s The Hotel St. Francis Cook Book:
From clamrecipes.net:
Clam Omelet |
| Ingredients - |
| Preparation: |
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 2. Steam the clams and removed them from their shells. 3. Place the clams in a food processor and pulse until the clams are in small bite size pieces. 4. In a medium saucepan, sauté the clams in butter over low heat. 5. Separate the eggs, whites in one bowl and yolks in the other. 6. Add the salt and paprika to the egg yolks and beat until light and fluffy. 7. Add the cream and chopped clams and mix thoroughly. 8. Beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. 9. Fold the whites into the clam mixture. 10. Pour the mixture into a buttered omelet pan and bake for about 25 minutes or until lightly browned. |
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