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Roast Clams in the Shell

Roasted clams served with butter, black pepper, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Roast Clams in the Shell

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

  1. Roast clams in a pan over a hot fire, in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C), or on hot stones at a clam bake.

  2. When the clams open, empty the juice into a saucepan.

  3. Add the clams to the saucepan with butter, black pepper, and a little coarse sea salt.

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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Clam + peppertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together952 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
Are the main component; heat opens their shells and cooks the flesh until tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and giving the clams a silky coating.
Black pepper
Adds a sharp, aromatic bite that balances the sweet, briny clam juice.

The step that matters

Empty the juice when the clams open. Clam juice is salty and flavorful, and overcooking the clams past opening toughens the flesh, so removing them promptly keeps them tender.

“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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