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Devilled Clams

A baked dish of clams mixed with bread crumbs, butter, and clam juice, topped with crumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Devilled Clams

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the clams

  1. Remove the hard part from the clams and drain them. Chop the clams finely and mix with the same quantity of fine bread crumbs.

  2. Season with pepper and no salt is needed.

Make the filling

  1. Melt 4 tablespoons of butter and mix it with the clam mixture and enough clam juice to make it moist but not liquid.

Fill and bake

  1. Wash and dry the clam shells, then butter them.

  2. Fill the shells with the clam mixture and scatter fine bread crumbs on top. Sprinkle a little water over them and dot with small bits of butter.

  3. Place the shells in a dripping pan and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  4. Serve hot on a napkin spread on a platter.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Clam + breadtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Clams
Provide the main savory filling and briny flavor of the dish.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling body, with crumbs on top browning in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the topping brown.
Clam juice
Moistens the filling so it stays tender without becoming liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the filling moist but not liquid. Too much clam juice makes the crumb mixture soggy and it will not hold its shape in the shells. Too little leaves it dry, so the crumbs bake hard instead of tender.

“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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