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Creamed Clams

A creamy clam dish made with butter, flour, cream, egg yolks, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter and whisk in the flour in a double boiler.

  2. Add the cream and stir until smooth.

Cook the clams

  1. Add the clams and cook until they are plump.

  2. Slowly stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Cook for 2 more minutes.

  4. Add the sherry.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provide the main seafood flavor and tender, plump bite in the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor, and forms the base for the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the melted butter and absorbs liquid.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sauce when gently heated.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a light aromatic note that balances the cream.

The step that matters

Slowly stir in the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but scramble if they meet hot liquid too quickly. Adding them slowly while stirring, over the gentle heat of a double boiler, lets them blend in and thicken the sauce smoothly.

“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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