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 ↓
Steamed Clams
Ingredients
Directions
Steam the clams
Steam the clams for five minutes.
Remove the upper shell of the clams.
Finish and serve
Add melted butter and pepper to the clams.
Serve the clams in their shell on an oyster plate.
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 + buttertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together840 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Clam + peppertop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together952 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Clams
- The main ingredient; steaming cooks the clams until they open and become tender.
- Butter
- Adds fat, richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the clams.
The step that matters
Steam for five minutes. Clam meat is tough when overcooked, so steaming too long makes it rubbery. Steam only until the shells open, since clams that stay closed may not be safe to eat.
“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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