Skip to main content
Main

Clam Cakes

Clam cakes are fried batter cakes made with raw clams, milk, clam water, crushed crackers, egg, flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Clam Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Squeeze out the black part of the clams and chop the rims.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the clams, milk, clam water, crushed crackers, egg, flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder. Mix until well combined.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot oil and fry until golden brown on both sides.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Raw clams
Provide the main flavor and the bulk of the cakes.
All-purpose flour
Forms the starchy structure that holds the batter together while frying.
Egg
Binds the ingredients together and helps set the cakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the cakes as they cook.
Butter crackers
Add body and absorb liquid, giving the batter a tender crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the batter.

The step that matters

Frying the spoonfuls in hot oil. The oil must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the cakes absorb oil and turn greasy before their centers 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.

You might also like

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