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Clam Soup

A soup made with clams, onion, butter, milk, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 clams

  1. Boil the clams in water for about 15 minutes until nearly done.

  2. Open the clams and chop them finely.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, melt the butter and sauté the chopped onion until translucent.

  2. Add the chopped clams and parsley or thyme to the pot.

  3. Just before serving, stir in the rich milk and thicken the soup with flour.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 savoury flavour and body of the soup.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness when used to cook the onion.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens in the butter.
Rich milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the broth.
Flour
Thickens the soup to give it a smoother, heavier texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the milk and flour just before serving. Milk can curdle or separate if it boils hard, and flour thickens best when it is stirred in and heated gently. Adding both near the end and keeping the soup at a gentle heat keeps it smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, butter, parsley, milk, flour. 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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