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Clam Soup

A soup made with clams, water, flour, milk, butter, pepper, and rolled crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the broth

  1. Boil 2 quarts of water.

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons of flour with a little water until smooth, then add to the boiling water and cook for 10 minutes.

Prepare the milk and clams

  1. Bring 1 pint of milk to a foam in a separate pot.

  2. Chop the clams finely and mix with a few rolled crackers, butter, and pepper in a separate dish.

Combine and simmer

  1. Pour the clam mixture into the boiling water and simmer for as long as possible.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 flavor and texture of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the water into a lightly bodied broth as it cooks.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the soup.
Rolled crackers
Bind the chopped clams and absorb moisture, adding body.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, savory flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Milk can curdle or scorch when it is boiled hard. Heating it gently until just foaming, as the record directs, keeps it smooth and prevents it from sticking to the pot.

“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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