Bad Titles Work, Too: Valdez Clam and Onion Soup

Sometimes, recipe choice is all about a good title. Sometimes, though, it's the really bad title that wins the day. My sister told me that if I focused on an Alaskan cookbook, I'd have to post a salmon dish; I knew I needed to post a fish dish of some sort, and went hunting. Alaska "Sourdough" Cookin' has plenty of salmon dishes, it's true, but nothing quite to compare with this:

Valdez Clam and Onion Soup

2 cans (7 ozs.) minced clams (1 pint)
4 slices bacon, sliced
3 cups onion rings
3 cups milk
1/2 tsp. celery salt
1/2 tsp. salt
6 slices hard toast
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

Fry bacon; add onion and cook until tender. Combine milk, seasonings and clams; heat. Place toast in 6 individual, heated soup bowls. Cover with onion rings and top with clam mixture. Sprinkle with cheese and serve immediately. Serves 6.

Now, Alaska "Sourdough" Cookin' was printed 13 years before the Exxon Valdez spilled oil all over the Prince William Sound, but I'm here to tell you, there's no way I can hear "Valdez" and not think "horrible oil spill." Combine "Valdez" with "bivalve shell fish" and I'm going to think it's all a horrible, twisted joke. Who'd want to eat a filter-feeder named after pollution gone wild?

...the recipe itself sounds tasty, though.

edit So, it was pointed out to me that my trying to puzzle out the "what kind of onion rings do they mean" issue was pretty pointless -- use raw, as you're cooking them up in bacon fat. That being said, let's use canned, crispy, fried onion products as a garnish, like you'd put on top of a green bean casserole if you were any of the hordes of community cookbook contributors whose efforts line my shelves./edit

Looks like an easy recipe to cut in half (in some cases, thirds -- take only 2 pieces of hard toast, not 3) to make 2 large meal-sized servings.