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Stewed Clams

A simple stew of clams cooked with flour, butter, peppercorns, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Clams

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew 1 quart of clams in their own liquor for several minutes.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour, 2 tablespoons of butter, and several whole peppercorns.

  3. Continue to stew for 15 minutes.

  4. Add ½ cup of cream and 2 beaten egg yolks.

  5. Stir well, season with salt and pepper, and serve.

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

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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
Form the main body of the dish and release their own liquor to form the stew base.
Flour
Thickens the stewing liquor so it becomes a lightly body-rich sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries flavor.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the stew.
Egg yolks
Enrich and further thicken the sauce when stirred in.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the stew boils after they go in, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy, so keep the heat low and stir well.

“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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