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Clam Soup

A soup made with clams, milk, water, butter, spices, and thickened with cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Remove the hard parts from the clams and set aside the soft portions.

  2. In a soup pot, combine the hard bits, clam liquor, water, and spices.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes, then strain the mixture, season with salt, and return to the heat with the soft clam parts.

Finish and serve

  1. When the soup begins to simmer, stir in the butter and cornstarch.

  2. Stew for 5 minutes, then pour into a tureen.

  3. Stir in the boiling milk and serve with oyster crackers and sliced lemon.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Clam + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together636 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 flavour and the soft meat that gives the soup its body.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy, mellow body to the broth.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth mouthfeel and rich flavour.
Cornstarch
Thickens the broth as its starch swells with heat, giving a silkier texture.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch and then the boiling milk. Cornstarch thickens only when it is heated in liquid, so it must be stirred in while the soup is simmering to dissolve and swell evenly without clumping. Adding the milk too early or letting the soup boil hard after it can cause curdling or a thin, grainy texture.

Swap the mace

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

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

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