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Boiled Clams with Two Eggs

Boiled clams served with two egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clam and butter work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 840 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Clams with Two Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrub the clam shells clean.

  2. Place clams over heat for a few minutes until they open.

  3. Cut clams in halves or thirds.

Cook and serve

  1. In a pan, combine clams, salted water, and butter.

  2. Cook for about 1 hour.

  3. Stir in the yolks of 2 eggs.

  4. Serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Clam + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together337 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Clams
Provide the main body and flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smooth, savory mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the mixture as they set with gentle heat.

The step that matters

Stir in the yolks of 2 eggs. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but can scramble if the mixture is too hot. Stir them in off the most intense heat so the sauce becomes smooth and creamy rather than grainy.

“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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