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Salad

Clam Salad

A salad of boiled clams, potatoes, and cold fish, optionally served with lettuce, watercress, or hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 322 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Clam Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Boil the clams in water for 10 minutes.

  2. Reserve the broth for soup.

Assemble the salad

  1. Chop the clams into small pieces and place them in a salad bowl.

  2. Add the chopped potatoes and cold fish to the bowl.

  3. If desired, add lettuce or watercress and hard-boiled eggs.

Make the soup

  1. For the soup, whisk warm milk into the clam broth without boiling.

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. Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Clam + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  4. Milk + fishtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Clam + fishtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Clams
Provides the main seafood flavor and the chewy texture of the salad.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, soaking up flavor and giving the salad bulk.
Cold fish
Adds more seafood flavor and a firm, flaky body to the salad.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the clam broth for the soup.

The step that matters

Whisking warm milk into the broth without boiling. Milk can curdle, scorch, or form a skin when it boils, and its proteins can separate. Keeping it below a boil and whisking it in keeps the soup smooth and creamy.

Swap the lettuce

The recipe marks lettuce as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, milk, potato, fish, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, milk, potato, fish, egg. 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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