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Clams Epicurean

Clams simmered in butter, sherry, and Worcestershire sauce served on toasted crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Clams Epicurean

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the clams

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish with a dash of cayenne.

  2. Add the clams and simmer for five minutes.

  3. Stir in the sherry and Worcestershire sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on toasted, buttered crackers.

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).

  2. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Clam + sherrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries the flavour of the cayenne.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a sharp, wine-like note to the clams.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth from its fermented, tangy seasoning.
Boston crackers
Form the crisp base that holds the warm clam mixture.

The step that matters

Simmer the clams for five minutes. Clams become tough and rubbery when their proteins are overcooked. Keep the heat gentle and watch the time, since the clams only need enough warmth to cook through.

“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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