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Cram Soup

A soup made from clams, water, butter, cracker dust, celery essence, lemon juice, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cram Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Strain the liquor from the clams and add ⅓ cup of water.

  2. Bring to a slow boil and skim.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the chopped clams, pepper, and salt, then stew for half an hour.

  2. Stir in the butter rolled in cracker dust, essence of celery, and lemon juice, then simmer for ten minutes.

Serve

  1. In a tureen, have ready 1 cup of scalding milk.

  2. Pour the soup over the milk, stirring well.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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 texture of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the broth.
Cracker dust
Thickens the soup slightly when stirred into the hot liquid.
Milk
Dilutes and mellows the broth, adding creaminess and softness.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter rolled in cracker dust. Stirring the butter and cracker dust into hot liquid lets them disperse evenly. If they are dropped in unmixed or the liquid is not hot enough, the butter can separate and the cracker dust can clump, leaving a greasy or grainy texture.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, pepper, butter, lemon, 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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