Skip to main content
Main

Clam Soup

A soup made with clams, water, onion, herbs, mace, butter, flour, cream, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clam broth

  1. Put clams and their liquor in a pot with water and boil for 3 minutes, skimming well.

  2. Strain the mixture, remove the soft portions of the clams, and keep them warm.

  3. Return the liquor to the pot with hard clam portions, onion, thyme, parsley, and mace; cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

Make the thickened base

  1. In a separate pan, melt butter until bubbling, then sprinkle in flour and stir until cooked.

  2. Gradually stir in hot cream or milk, then add to the strained clam liquor along with salt and cayenne pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the soft clams without chopping, mix well, and heat thoroughly without boiling. 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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

Clams
Provide the main flavour and, with their liquor, the savoury base of the soup.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness and a rounded, savoury flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream mixture into a smooth, body-giving roux.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, giving the soup a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Heat the clams without boiling. Boiling toughens clam meat and can curdle the cream, so the soft clams should be added at the end and heated gently until just hot.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, onion, thyme, parsley, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, onion, thyme, parsley, butter, flour, cream. 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.

More clam soup recipes

Mock 5Philadelphia 3 See all 191 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes