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Clam Soup

A savory soup made with salt pork, onions, clams, water, flour, milk, butter, pepper, sea salt, and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Prepare the base

  1. Cut salt pork into very small squares and fry until light brown.

  2. Add finely chopped onion and cook for about 10 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Add 2 quarts of water and 1 quart of clams.

  2. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour with water and add it to 1 pint of milk.

  3. Pour the milk mixture into the soup and let it boil for about 5 minutes.

  4. Season with butter, pepper, coarse sea salt, and Worcestershire sauce to taste.

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. Pork + clamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  3. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Renders fat that carries flavour into the soup base.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the soup becomes slightly creamy.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy body to the soup.
Clams
Provide the main seafood flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Pour the milk mixture into the soup and let it boil for about 5 minutes. Flour mixed with milk must be stirred smooth before it is added, and the soup then needs to simmer or boil. Boiling activates the starch so the soup thickens, while adding flour in lumps leaves pasty clumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, clam, flour, milk, butter, pepper, sauce. 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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