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Clam Soup

A creamy clam soup made with clams, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Drain the liquor from the clams and put it in a pot with ½ cup of water.

  2. Add the chopped clams and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and add the butter.

  4. Bring to a boil again and add 1 quart of boiling hot milk.

  5. Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with a little cold milk or 2 finely rolled crackers.

  6. Optionally add a little mace and lemon juice for flavor.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Clam + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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.
Milk
Forms the creamy body of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it simmers with the milk.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Crackers
Help thicken the soup and add a subtle toasted flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour mixture. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold milk before it goes in, because dry flour added directly clumps and does not thicken evenly. Stirring while it heats lets starch swell and thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, pepper, egg, butter, milk, flour, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, pepper, egg, butter, milk, flour, lemon. 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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