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Minced Clams

A baked clam dish with minced clams, butter, flour, cream, spices, egg yolks, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Minced Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Open 25 clams, keeping the half shells intact. Wash the clams, cut off the heads, and mince the clams very fine.

  2. Put the minced clams over the fire to stew in their own juice.

Make the filling

  1. Peel and thinly slice an onion. In a pan, heat 2 ounces of butter and add the onion until it begins to turn yellow.

  2. Stir in 2 ounces of flour, the minced clams, and their broth, along with ½ pint of cream or milk.

  3. Add ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt, ¼ teaspoon of grated nutmeg, ¼ teaspoon of white pepper, and a dash of cayenne. Simmer for 20 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the yolks of 8 eggs.

Fill and top

  1. Spoon the mixture into the clam shells, arrange them on a baking pan, and dust with bread crumbs.

  2. Top each shell with a small piece of butter.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clam + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 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 the bulk of the filling.
Egg yolks
Set the mixture when heated, giving it a thick, custard-like body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream mixture so the filling holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the onion base and the topping.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the filling into a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. Adding them to a very hot mixture can curdle them, so removing the pan from the heat first keeps the filling smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, butter, flour, cream, nutmeg, egg, bread):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, butter, flour, cream, nutmeg, egg, bread. 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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