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Cream of Clam Soup

A creamy soup made with butter, flour, milk, clams, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cream of Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a double boiler.

  2. Stir in the flour, salt, and pepper or paprika.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring until hot and smooth.

Add the clams and finish

  1. Stir in the minced clams and cook for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the soup and reheat.

  3. Add the cream and serve immediately.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + clamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Butter
Fat that carries flavor and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid, giving body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and gives it a creamy, mild body.
Minced clams
Provides the main clam flavor and savory character of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk, stirring until hot and smooth. Adding liquid slowly to the butter and flour mixture while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly. Adding it all at once tends to form lumps that are hard to smooth out.

“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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