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Escaloped Clams

Escaloped clams are baked clams filled with a crumbed mixture of clams, eggs, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Escaloped Clams

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Moisten the cracker crumbs with warm milk and clam liquor in a separate dish.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, melted butter, and chopped clams to the moistened cracker mixture.

Fill and bake

  1. Scrub the clam shells clean and grease them with butter.

  2. Fill each shell heaping with the clam mixture and sprinkle with additional bread crumbs.

  3. Place the filled shells in a pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until browned.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Clam + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Clams
Provide the main savoury flavour and bulk of the filling.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb the milk and liquor, giving the filling body and a soft, binding texture.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set during baking, holding it together in the shells.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Moistening the cracker crumbs. The crumbs need to absorb the warm milk and clam liquor evenly before the eggs go in. Dry pockets stay gritty, and wet pockets make the filling loose and slow to set in the oven.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, milk, egg, butter, pepper):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, milk, egg, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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