Name: Clam Broth
Ingredients: well-washed clams; hot water; salt and pepper to taste; grated cracker (optional); buttered crackers (for serving)

Why it works: Clam and pepper work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 952 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Clam Broth

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Steam the clams

Place well-washed clams in a clean pan in a 400°F (200°C) oven or in a steamer over high heat.
When the clams open, drain the liquid and add an equal amount of hot water.

Season and serve

Season with salt and pepper to taste.
If desired, thicken the broth with grated cracker or serve plain with buttered crackers.

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.

Clam + peppertop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together952 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Clams: Release their natural liquor as they open, forming the flavourful base of the broth.
Grated cracker: Starch from the crumbs thickens the broth slightly when stirred in.

“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.