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Clam Soup

A soup made from clams, stock, butter, flour, pepper, salt, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and parsley work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 943 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Open the clams, wash them well in cold water, and chop them finely.

Make the soup

  1. Place the chopped clams in a kettle with the stock and heat until melted.

  2. Melt the butter and mix it with the flour.

  3. Add the butter-flour mixture to the kettle and stir continuously until it boils.

Finish and can

  1. Turn off the heat and add the pepper, salt, and chopped parsley.

  2. Place the soup in cans, cap them, tip, and process.

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. Corn + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  5. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Quahaugs
Provide the main clam flavour and the chunky body of the soup.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the clam flavour through the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Corn starch or flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter-flour mixture until it boils. Flour and starch can clump when added to hot liquid. Constant stirring disperses them evenly, and the thickening only fully develops once the mixture reaches a boil.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, butter, parsley):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, butter, parsley. 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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