Why it works: Clam and flour work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 576 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Soft Clams Fried
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the clams
Remove the clams from their shells and wash them thoroughly in plenty of water.
Lay the clams on a napkin to dry.
Coat the clams thickly in flour.
Fry
Heat lard in a frying pan until it is one-third full and hot.
Add salt to the lard.
Using a fork, place the clams in the hot lard one at a time, laying them close together.
Fry gently until one side is brown, then turn them over to brown the other side.
Transfer the fried clams to a hot dish and serve immediately.
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.
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Clam + flourtop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together576 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Soft clams
- Provide the main protein, cooked briefly so the flesh stays tender inside a crisp coating.
- All-purpose flour
- Forms a thick coating that browns and crisps in the hot fat while protecting the clam.
- Lard
- Frying fat that conducts heat evenly and browns the flour coating, adding richness.
The step that matters
Placing the clams in the hot lard. Clams added to fat that is not hot enough absorb grease instead of crisping. Spacing them close but one at a time keeps the fat temperature steady so the coating browns evenly.
“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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