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Stewed Clams

A simple stew of clams cooked in milk or broth, thickened with flour and butter, seasoned with white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Stewed Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Wash the clams thoroughly.

  2. Place the clams in a large iron pot with ½ cup of hot water and heat over the fire.

  3. Once the shells open, remove the clams and cut off the inedible fringe with clean scissors.

Make the stew

  1. Put the clams in a stew pan with the broth from the pot and simmer until tender.

  2. Season with pepper and thicken the gravy with flour mixed into melted butter.

Milk variation and serving

  1. Alternatively, boil 1 pint of milk with a dash of white pepper and a small pat of butter.

  2. Add the clams to the boiling milk 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clam + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together636 recipes

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

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

Round clams
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender when simmered in the broth.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the melted butter and broth.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flour so it thickens smoothly without lumps.
Milk
Forms a creamy base for the alternative version in which the clams are added.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with flour and butter. Flour mixed into melted butter first, then blended into the liquid, prevents lumps; adding dry flour directly to hot liquid clumps it.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, flour, butter, 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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