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Clam Soup

A soup made with clams, water, flour, butter, milk, eggs, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Catch clams and clean them.

  2. Chop the clams.

Make the soup

  1. Add 3 quarts of water to the clams' liquor.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add the chopped clams to the boiling water.

  4. Boil for 3 minutes while stirring.

  5. In a separate bowl, mix 4 tablespoons of flour and 4 tablespoons of butter with 1 pint of milk and some pepper.

  6. Remove the soup from heat.

  7. Stir in the beaten eggs.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, allowing each person to season with salt to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Clams
Provide the main flavor and texture of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the soup becomes creamy.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor in the milk mixture.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup.
Eggs
Add body and help thicken the soup when stirred in off heat.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten eggs. Eggs thicken by setting when heated gently, so removing the soup from heat before adding them prevents curdling and keeps the texture smooth.

“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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