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Fried Clams

Fried clams coated in cracked crackers and fried in butter and lard.

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 ↓

Fried Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl.

  2. Grate the crackers into a separate dish.

  3. Sprinkle pepper on the clams.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each clam into the egg, then coat with grated cracker.

  2. Fry the clams in equal parts butter and lard until golden, about a few minutes.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + clamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together952 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Egg + clamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together337 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the cracker coating to the clams so it adheres during frying.
Crackers
Form a crisp, browned crust around the clams when fried.
Clams
The main ingredient, cooked through while the coating turns crisp.
Butter
Adds rich flavor and helps the coating brown in the frying fat.
Lard
Provides a high-heat frying fat that browns the coating evenly.

The step that matters

Frying the coated clams. Clams cook quickly and can turn rubbery if overcooked, while the coating needs enough heat to turn golden. Frying in hot fat for only a few minutes balances crisp browning with tender clam meat.

“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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