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Clam Sauce

A sauce made from clams, butter, flour, nutmeg, water, clam liquor, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Clam Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Boil the clams in ½ pint of water for 5 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix 3 ounces of butter, 1 ounce of flour, and a pinch of nutmeg.

  2. Add ½ pint of boiling water and ½ pint of clam liquor to the mixture.

  3. Stir with an egg beater and boil for 1-2 minutes.

  4. Add 2 egg yolks and 1 cup of water, along with a little lemon juice.

  5. Strain the sauce through a wet cloth.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix in 4 ounces of butter, drain the clams, and add them to the sauce.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Clam liquor
Supplies the clam flavour that defines the sauce.
Clams
Provide the main seafood flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the sauce is boiling hard when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy, so add them off the boil and keep the heat low while stirring.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, butter, flour, nutmeg, egg. 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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