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Stewed Clams

Stewed clams simmered with water, clam liquor, butter, flour, and pepper, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clam and butter work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 840 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Stewed Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove clams from their shells and place them in a pot.

  2. Add equal parts clam liquor and water to nearly cover the clams.

Cook

  1. Cook over gentle heat for 30 minutes, skimming off any scum.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix butter with flour and add to the clams.

  3. Season with pepper, cover, and simmer for an additional 15 minutes.

  4. Serve the clams over toast.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Clam + flourtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together576 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 protein and savory flavor of the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the broth a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Mixed with butter to thicken the cooking liquid into a silky stew.
Clam liquor
Supplies concentrated briny clam flavor to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour thickens only when it is evenly dispersed and heated. Mixing it with butter first helps prevent lumps, and it should be stirred in so the liquid thickens smoothly as it simmers.

“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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