A guest post from Mara Conrad Tippett!

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of the clamming adventures my sister and I had with my grandfather, Reginald Conrad. He’d take us out on his boat to explore the harbors near his home in East Hampton: Napeague, Accabonac, and Three Mile. Upon returning with bushels of clams, my grandmother would get to work making clam pies. My great-grandmother’s recipe for clam pie is published in “A Full Century of Tip of the Island Cooking Wisdom 1896-1996” compiled by the Ladies Village Improvement Society of East Hampton, NY.

Clam Pie—Open hard clams to make 1 pt., drain clams and chop fine with 1 onion, put over fire and scald in clam juice with 1 pint of milk added; add 1 tblsp. sugar, 1 tblsp. flour with a little water, 6 milk crackers, crumbled. Make a rich pie crust and line pie plate; over the bottom sprinkle 1 tblsp. minute tapioca, fill with clam mixture and top with crust. Bake in 400 degree oven. Serve very hot.

—Mrs. William Conrad

(Mrs. Conrad’s clam pies are famous. One customer orders 20 at a time when leaving in the fall. She puts them down in the deep freeze for the winter.)

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