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Clam Fritters

A batter of clam liquor, flour, eggs, and baking soda, mixed with chopped clams, fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Clam Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine clam liquor, flour, beaten eggs, and dissolved baking soda in hot water to make a batter.

  2. Stir the chopped clams into the batter.

Fry

  1. Heat hot lard in a frying pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the hot lard and fry until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Clam + flourtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together576 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Clam + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together337 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set when fried.
Flour
Forms the body of the batter, giving the fritters their structure.
Baking soda
Raises the batter and helps the fritters puff and lighten as they cook.
Clam liquor
Adds moisture and briny clam flavor to the batter.
Clams
Provide the main seafood flavor and chewy texture throughout the fritters.

The step that matters

Frying the batter in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy and heavy instead of browning quickly. Hot fat sets the outside fast, so the fritters stay light and crisp while the inside cooks through.

“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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