Skip to main content
Main

Mary's Clam Soup

A soup made with clams, milk, cream, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mary's Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Boil the clams in their own liquor for 20 minutes.

  2. Chop the clams very fine.

Make the soup

  1. Mix flour smooth in a little of the milk.

  2. Add the rest of the milk to the mixture and pour it into the kettle with the clams.

  3. Let it boil for a few minutes to cook the flour.

  4. Add the cream, pepper, and salt, then serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + clamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together636 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and, once heated with the flour, thickens it into a creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the soup body; boiling cooks out its raw taste.
Clams
Provide the main flavor and texture of the soup, and their cooking liquor adds savory depth.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Let it boil for a few minutes to cook the flour. Raw flour tastes pasty and does not thicken fully until its starch granules swell and gelatinize in hot liquid. Boiling for a few minutes cooks the flour through, so the soup thickens evenly and loses its floury taste.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More clam soup recipes

Mock 5Philadelphia 3 See all 191 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes