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Little-neck Clams on the Half-shell

Fresh little-neck clams served on their shells with lemon, thin brown bread, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Little-neck Clams on the Half-shell

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the clam shells thoroughly with cold water.

  2. Open the clams like raw oysters, keeping each clam in its shell with its liquor.

Serve

  1. Arrange half a dozen clams on a plate.

  2. Place a piece of lemon on each plate.

  3. Serve the clams at the beginning of dinner with thin brown bread and butter.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Clam + breadtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Little-neck clams
Provide the raw, briny shellfish that is the centre of the dish.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that cuts the clams' briny, salty flavour.
Thin brown bread
Offers a neutral, slightly nutty base to carry the clam and butter.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth fat that balances the clams' brininess.

The step that matters

Open the clams like raw oysters, keeping each clam in its shell with its liquor.. Clams must be opened carefully so the muscle is cut without losing the liquor, which carries most of the briny flavour. Tearing the clam or spilling its liquor leaves the dish bland and gritty. Thorough washing first removes sand that the liquor would otherwise carry into the mouth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, bread, butter):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, bread, butter. 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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