Skip to main content
Main

Clam Bouillon

A clear broth made by steaming fresh clams in water, then clarifying with egg and seasoning with salt and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clam and white pepper work together. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 47 recipes. The science ↓

Clam Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Scrub the clams thoroughly with a stiff brush and change the water several times to ensure the shells are clean.

  2. Place the clams in a closely covered kettle with 1 quart of cold water.

  3. Steam the clams until the shells are well opened.

Make and finish the broth

  1. Strain the liquid from the clams.

  2. Clear the broth with egg according to the rule for clearing soup stock.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of white pepper.

  4. Strain again 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. Clam + white peppertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together47 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fresh clams
Release their natural liquor, which becomes the flavourful base of the broth.
Cold water
Extracts flavour from the clams as they steam and forms the broth's liquid volume.
Egg (in the method)
Clears the broth by trapping fine particles that cloud the liquid.

The step that matters

Clear the broth with egg. Egg whites coagulate as they heat and trap suspended particles, which then strain out. If the broth is stirred or boiled too vigorously during clearing, the particles are dispersed instead and the broth stays cloudy.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes