Skip to main content
Main

Clam Soup, I

A soup made from clams, water, milk, egg yolks, butter, salt, parsley, and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Clam Soup, I

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the chopped clams in 3 pints of water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander.

  3. Add 3 pints of milk and boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Stir in the beaten egg yolks, butter, and salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Place chopped parsley and rolled crackers in a tureen and pour the soup over them.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Clam + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Clams
Provide the main flavour of the broth as they cook in the water.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness when stirred into the hot liquid.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the broth.
Crackers
Soften in the hot soup and add body to the serving.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the soup is too hot when they are added. Stirring steadily and removing the pan from the heat first helps them thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, milk, egg, butter. 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.

More clam soup recipes

Mock 5Philadelphia 3 See all 191 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes