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Fried Soft Clams

Fried soft clams coated in crumbs and fried in fat, served hot with lemon and cabbage or pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cabbage work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 397 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fried Soft Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the clams in cold water to remove sand and lay them on a towel to dry.

  2. Prepare a frying kettle half full of hot fat, a dish of beaten eggs, and a platter of crumbs.

Fry

  1. Roll the clams in the crumbs, dip them in the beaten egg, and roll them in crumbs again.

  2. When the fat is smoking hot, add the clams and fry until golden brown.

  3. Remove the clams with a skimmer and place them on brown paper to drain excess fat.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with lemon quarters, sliced cabbage, or pickles.

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. Lemon + cabbagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together397 recipes

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Soft clams
Provide the main filling of tender seafood that cooks quickly inside the crisp coating.
Beaten eggs
Act as a binding layer that helps the crumbs stick to the clams.
Cracker dust or bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden, browned coating when fried in hot fat.
Fat for frying
Conducts heat to cook the clams quickly and brown the crumb coating.

The step that matters

Frying in smoking-hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the crumb coating absorbs oil and turns greasy before it browns. Hot fat sets the coating quickly, sealing in moisture so the clams stay tender and the crust stays crisp.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, egg, bread, 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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