Name: Seaside Clam Bake
Ingredients: seaweed; fresh clams; chicken halves

Why it works: Clam and chicken work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 63 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-decenal, which smells green, must. The science ↓

Seaside Clam Bake

Ingredients

seaweed
fresh clams
chicken halves

Directions

Prepare a level floor of stones for an oven.
Burn seaweed on the stones until they crackle when water is sprinkled on them.
Sweep off the ashes and spread a thin layer of seaweed.
Rinse the clams in salt water and pile them on the hot stones, making a low center and a ridge around the edges.
Place halved, well-dressed chicken in the depression made by the clams.

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.

Clam + chickentop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together63 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).
Seaweed + clamtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Seaweed + chickentop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together23 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).