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Clam Soup

A soup made from clams, water, mace, peppercorns, butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Put 30 clams in a pot with 4 quarts of water and boil for 2 hours.

  2. Remove the clams from the pot.

  3. Chop the clams finely.

  4. Return the chopped clams to the pot.

  5. Add a little mace and a few peppercorns to the pot.

  6. Boil the soup for 1 hour longer.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a bowl, rub together a small piece of butter with 2 tablespoons of flour.

  2. Stir the butter‑flour mixture into 1 pint of boiling milk.

  3. After the soup has boiled for 3 hours, pour it into a tureen.

  4. Stir in the thickened milk.

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 + milktop 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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
Their flavour and body give the soup its main character.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it lends body to the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the finished soup.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the milk.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter-flour mixture into boiling milk. Flour clumps if it is added without being worked into the butter first. Rubbing them together coats the flour particles with fat, which lets them disperse evenly and thicken smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, butter, flour, milk):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, butter, flour, milk. 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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