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Clam and Oyster Soup

A seafood soup made with clams, oysters, milk, onion, mace, parsley, bay leaf, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Fannie Merritt Farmer · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Clam and Oyster Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shellfish

  1. Clean and pick over oysters using one-third cup cold water; reserve liquor, and add oysters slightly chopped.

  2. Clean and pick over clams, reserve liquor, and add to hard part of clams, finely chopped; put aside soft part of clams.

Make the soup

  1. Heat slowly to boiling point clams and oysters with liquor from both, let simmer twenty minutes and strain through cheese-cloth.

  2. Scald milk with onion, mace, parsley, and bay leaf; remove seasonings, and add milk to stock.

  3. Thicken with butter and flour cooked together, add soft part of clams, and cook two minutes.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

939Calories
56 gProtein
24 gFat
124 gCarbs

Counts 10 of 11 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 10 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Shrimp100g cooked99
Oyster6 medium (84g)81
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Bay Leaf1 leaf (0.6g)2
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Fannie Merritt Farmer. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Clam + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide the main seafood flavour and body of the soup stock.
Oysters
Add briny seafood flavour and savoury depth to the stock.
Milk
Makes the soup creamy and mellows the seafood stock.
Butter
Enriches the soup and, cooked with flour, forms a roux that thickens it.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.

The step that matters

Thicken with butter and flour cooked together. Cooking the flour in butter before adding it cooks off raw starch taste and lets the flour thicken smoothly without lumps. Adding it raw or too quickly can leave a pasty texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, oyster, milk, onion, parsley, butter, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, oyster, milk, onion, parsley, butter, flour. 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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