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Mary's Clam Soup

A creamy clam soup made with milk, cream, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mary's Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the clams in their own liquor for 20 minutes.

  2. Chop the clams very fine.

  3. Mix flour smooth in a little of the milk.

  4. Add the rest of the milk to the kettle with the clams.

  5. Let it boil for a few minutes to cook the flour.

  6. Add the cream, pepper, and salt.

  7. Serve.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + clamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together636 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 flavour and body of the soup once chopped and cooked in their liquor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup, giving it a creamy, mellow body.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the soup a smooth, body-rich texture.
Rich cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the flavour and smoothing the texture.

The step that matters

Let it boil for a few minutes to cook the flour. Flour thickens liquid but tastes raw and pasty unless its starch is fully cooked. Boiling it for a few minutes swells the starch granules and removes the floury taste, so the soup stays smooth rather than gluey or chalky.

“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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