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Clam Cocktails

A chilled appetizer of clams mixed with ketchup, horseradish, Tabasco, and vinegar, served in crisp green pepper cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Clam Cocktails

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the tops off the green peppers and trim the bottoms so they stand firmly on plates.

  2. Place the peppers in ice-cold water until crisp, then wipe them dry.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the clams with the tomato ketchup, horseradish, Tabasco sauce, and vinegar or lemon juice.

  2. Fill the peppers with the clam mixture and garnish the tops with chopped olives and green peppers.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Ketchup + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Little neck clams
Provide the main seafood body and briny flavor of the cocktail.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness, acidity and a rich red colour to the sauce.
Horseradish
Adds sharp pungency that cuts through the richness of the clams.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the ketchup.
Green peppers
Serve as crisp edible cups that hold the clam mixture.

The step that matters

Keep the clams thoroughly cold. Cold clams stay firm and fresh-tasting, and keeping the mixture chilled slows bacterial growth and spoilage, so the clams should stay cold from start to finish.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clam, tomato, ketchup, sauce, vinegar, olive):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clam, tomato, ketchup, sauce, vinegar, olive. 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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