Name: Clam Soup, with Milk
Ingredients: 50 small clams, chopped fine; 2 quarts milk; 2 tablespoons Cottolene (or other cooking fat); 2 tablespoons flour; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; Salt to taste; Cayenne pepper to taste

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Clam Soup, with Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

Rub Cottolene and flour together until smooth, then add 1 cup of milk.
In a stew pan, bring the remaining milk to a boil.
Stir in the flour and Cottolene mixture briskly.

Add the clams and serve

Let it boil for several minutes, then add the clams.
Boil everything together for 5 minutes.
Finally, add the parsley and 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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Clam + parsleytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together232 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Clam + milktop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together636 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 flavor and body of the soup as they cook in the milk.
Milk: Forms the liquid base of the soup and gives it a creamy richness.
Flour: Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the soup body.
Cottolene: Fat that coats the flour so it blends smoothly and adds richness.

The step that matters

Stir the flour and fat mixture briskly into the boiling milk. Flour clumps when added to hot liquid unless it is well dispersed with fat first and stirred vigorously. Smooth dispersion lets the starch thicken the milk evenly without lumps.

Swap the parsley

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

Parsleythe original
Jalapenofits about as well
Nutmegfits about as well
Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, milk, flour, pepper. 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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Clam Soup, with Milk