It is known that Native Americans in what is now the eastern United States developed techniques to bake (or steam) clams, at least in Florida. Contrary to legend, though, American colonists did not learn to enjoy baked clams from Native Americans. The colonists did not consider clams to be an acceptable human food and instead fed clams to pigs, except during times of famine. The clambake as it is now known does not go back to the colonial period. Consciously based on indigenous foods, it was developed in the United States
after the American Revolution—a part of a created mythology as an "icon of its unique cultural identity". After the Civil War, railroads began carrying fresh Atlantic seafood on ice from New York through Pennsylvania, Ohio and on to Chicago. This was the beginning of the popularity of the clambake in the Cleveland area. The event, called the "Allen’s Neck Friends Meeting Clambake", was attended by 625 people in 2017. In 1950 the Maine Department of Sea and Shore Fisheries published a 12-page booklet titled "How to Prepare a Maine Clambake with Lobsters and All the Fixin's". The 1975 edition of
Joy of Cooking, the cookbook first published in 1931, describes two versions of a clambake. The big version is cooked in a sandpit, and the small version is cooked in a large pot on a stove or a grill. == Method ==