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General Burnside's Clam Soup

A soup of clams, onions, water, milk, flour, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

General Burnside's Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine clams, onions, and water in a large pot.

  2. Boil for 2 hours.

  3. Strain the mixture to remove solids.

Thicken the milk

  1. Scald the milk in a separate pot.

  2. Thicken the milk with flour, stirring until smooth.

  3. Season the milk with coarse sea salt to taste.

Finish the soup

  1. Chop the clams finely and remove any black parts from the stomachs.

  2. Add the clams to the soup.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Clam + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 seafood flavor and body of the soup.
Onions
Release aromatic sweetness into the broth as they boil.
Milk
Forms the creamy base and gives the soup its rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells when heated.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with flour, stirring until smooth. Flour starch clumps when it hits hot liquid unless it is dispersed first. Stirring keeps the particles separate so the starch swells evenly and the milk thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, milk, flour. 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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