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Clam Fritters

A batter of flour, baking powder, eggs, and clam juice mixed with minced clams and butter, fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clam and butter work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 840 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Clam Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and eggs.

  2. Mix in enough clam juice to create a batter.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix minced clams with butter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a shallow frying pan until very hot.

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

  3. After 3-4 minutes, turn the fritters over and fry for an additional moment.

  4. Remove fritters and drain on a cloth before serving.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + clamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together576 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the batter together.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set as they heat, giving the fritters body.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the fritters puff and turn light.
Clams
Supply the main flavor and tender bits of seafood throughout the fritters.
Clam juice
Adds moisture and extra clam flavor to loosen the batter.

The step that matters

Frying in very hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter soaks up fat instead of crisping quickly, so the fritters turn greasy and dense. A properly hot pan seals the outside fast, creating a crisp crust and a tender interior.

“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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