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Clam Bouillon with Whipped Cream

A clam broth made by steaming clams in water, strained, seasoned, and served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clam and cream work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Clam Bouillon with Whipped Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Wash and scrub the clams with a brush, changing the water several times.

  2. Place the clams in a kettle, add the cold water, and cover tightly.

Steam and serve

  1. Bring the kettle gradually to a boil and steam until the shells open.

  2. Strain the liquid through cheesecloth, season with salt and pepper, and serve in bouillon cups topped with whipped cream.

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. Clam + creamtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Clam + peppertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together952 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Clams
Supply the main flavor and the briny liquid released as they steam open.
Cold water
Provides the liquid in which the clams steam and that becomes the broth.

The step that matters

Heating the kettle gradually and covering it tightly. Clams open as their shells are heated and steam builds inside the covered kettle. Heating too hard or too long toughens the clam meat, which makes the clams chewy and the broth less delicate. Stop heating once the shells have opened.

“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.

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