Fried clams are a New England specialty. They can be found across the region, as well as in Massachusetts alone.

But how did the fried clam come to be? Who brought this deep fried dish to life?

You are viewing: Who Invented Fried Clams

The invention of the fried clam is largely credited to Woodman’s of Essex, a seafood restaurant on the North Shore that claims to have invented the fried clam in July 1916.

It may not come as a surprise. Readers have voted this local institution the most iconic restaurant in the Boston area. And last year, readers named it the No. 1 spot in Mass. to get fried clams.

Woodman’s started out as a concession stand on Main Street in Essex, owned and operated by Lawrence “Chubby” Woodman and his wife Bessie. They sold potato chips, grocery items, and clams. At this stand on July 3, 1916, a fisherman by the name of Tarr jokingly suggested Chubby fry his clams like he did his chips so they’d sell better.

“My grandpa, joking around with him, took a whole clam with a shell on it and threw it in. The thing exploded,” said Steve Woodman, an owner of Woodman’s and grandson of Chubby and Bessie.

Read more : Who Is Responsible For Burst Water Pipes

After they’d made jokes about it, Chubby and Bessie decided to try it out. They tested out different batters until they had a winner. The couple debuted their fried clams at Essex’s Fourth of July parade the next day.

The same ingredients are still used at Woodman’s today — fresh clams, evaporated milk, corn flour, and lard.

The Woodman’s fried clam was significant because it led to the dish becoming a staple across New England, even stretching to other parts of the U.S.

“Now, if you look at all of New England, there are fried clam shacks all along the coast of New England,” Steve Woodman said. “Maine, down to New Hampshire and Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, they even go down to Florida.”

However, there are some other claims to fried clam fame. An old menu from Union Oyster House, the oldest restaurant in Boston, lists Ipswich fried clams as an option. The catch? This menu is from the 1850s, says Joseph Milano, president of Union Oyster House. This means the restaurant sold some version of a fried clam about 60 years before Woodman’s came on the scene.

The crown may still go to Woodman’s, as Union Oyster House might’ve used a different recipe for their fried clams. A recipe from “The National Cook Book,” published in 1856 by Hannah Mary Bouvier Peterson, describes a different recipe than the one Woodman’s came up with later.

“Dry them in a napkin, season them with cayenne pepper and salt if necessary, and fry them in butter,” Peterson wrote. “Or, they may be fried in egg and bread crumbs as oysters.”

Read more : Who Is Future From 8 Mile

Milano was unsure of whether the clams listed on the 1850 menu were deep fried or prepared another way. Union Oyster House has fried clams on the menu today, however they are more like Woodman’s, as “everything today is deep fried,” Milano said.

Megan J. Elias, associate professor and director of gastronomy at Boston University, says Union Oyster House likely used a different recipe than Woodman’s. This is likely due to the fact that electricity wasn’t commonly used in kitchens until the 1920s.

“Most restaurants, and even home cooks, wouldn’t have been using much electricity in their kitchens until the early 20th century, but it was more like the 1920s,” Elias said. “Having a big pot of boiling oil, which is obviously what you need, it takes up a lot of fuel, and if you’re heating your stove with coal or with chopped wood, that stuff is going to be a lot more expensive than electricity.”

Even though one can claim to have done so, it is also important to consider what determines whether or not someone invented a food. An important factor to consider is publicizing the food. Because there’s always the possibility that someone made it and never told anyone, it is hard to say for certain whether or not someone invented a food, Elias said.

“Things like fried clams, it’s much more difficult because who knows? Maybe somebody did that at home and never told anybody,” she said.

Still, Steve Woodman says his family’s restaurant’s clams stand out from others because the success of Woodman’s led to many other businesses following suit, creating its own industry and leaving its mark on New England.

“You have seafood distributorships starting, you had salesmen going out and selling the product,” he said. “Restaurants grew, so you had people working in restaurants to serve the people. It just didn’t affect us. It actually affected the whole region, to where now it’s a big business for a lot of people.”

Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHO