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Clam and Tomato Consommé

A clear soup made with clams, tomatoes, beef, veal, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Clam and Tomato Consommé

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrub the clams thoroughly.

  2. Place them in a granite stew pan with ½ cup cold water, cover, and cook until the shells open.

  3. Remove the clams and strain the liquid through double cheesecloth to obtain clam water.

  4. In a soup kettle, wipe the beef and cut it into ½ inch cubes.

  5. Brown half of the beef in marrow from the marrow bone.

Make the consommé

  1. Add the remaining beef, veal cut into pieces, browned meat, and bones to the kettle with 2 quarts cold water.

  2. Let it stand for 30 minutes.

  3. Heat slowly to boiling point, then let it simmer for 4 hours.

  4. Add chicken stock and simmer for an additional hour.

Finish and clear

  1. Cook the diced vegetables in butter for 5 minutes, then add them to the soup along with seasonings.

  2. Simmer for 1.5 hours.

  3. Strain the soup, cool quickly, remove the fat, and clear.

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. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Beef + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef
Browned beef adds deep meaty flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Veal knuckle
Its collagen breaks down into gelatin, giving the broth a fuller body.
Clams
Their liquor supplies a fresh, briny sea flavour to the consommé.
Canned tomatoes
Provide acidity and fruity flavour that balances the rich meat stock.
Chicken stock
Adds savoury depth and extra body to the base.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the diced vegetables as they cook before going into the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and do not boil hard. Heating slowly to a gentle simmer keeps fat and fine particles from being churned into the liquid. Vigorous boiling emulsifies fat and stirs up debris, which clouds the broth and makes it harder to clear.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, tomato, beef, butter, veal, thyme, chicken):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, tomato, beef, butter, veal, thyme, chicken. 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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