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Clam-broth

A simple broth made by boiling clams with water, then seasoning with cracker crumbs, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clam and butter work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 840 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Clam-broth

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the clams thoroughly in their shells.

  2. Put the clams in a kettle with 1 cup of water.

  3. Bring to a boil and keep boiling for 1 minute until the shells open.

  4. Pour off the broth and serve hot.

  5. Add cracker crumbs, butter, and salt to taste.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Clams
Release their juices and natural salty flavor into the water to make the broth.
Cracker crumbs
Thicken the broth slightly and add body to the liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the broth's flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling for 1 minute until the shells open. Boiling too long toughens clam meat and can make the broth taste bitter or rubbery. Stop once the shells open so the clams stay tender and the broth stays clean.

“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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