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Clam Fritters Without Egg

Clam fritters made without egg, using clams, flour, baking powder, pepper, salt, and fried in meat drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Clam and meat work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 36 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Clam Fritters Without Egg

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Chop the clams and add their liquor.

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, pepper, and salt.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot meat drippings.

  2. Fry until golden brown.

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 + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together36 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Clam + flourtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together576 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. 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
Provide the main flavor and texture, with their liquor adding moisture to the batter.
Flour
Provides starch that sets during frying, giving the fritters structure without eggs.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the fritters puff and turn light.
Meat drippings
Fat for frying that conducts heat and browns the outside of the fritters.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into hot drippings. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the batter soaks up grease and turns heavy; if too hot, the outside burns before the centre cooks.

“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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