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Minced Clams on Toast

A toast topped with minced clams simmered in butter, red pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Minced Clams on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Open the clams and chop them finely, saving all the liquor.

Make the filling

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and add the chopped clams, liquor, red pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Stew for a few minutes and thicken with cream sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Clam + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Little neck clams
Provide the main savory filling and their briny liquor adds flavor to the mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the pan mixture.
Cream sauce
Thickens the stewed clam mixture into a spreadable filling.

The step that matters

Stew until thickened, not boiled hard. Gentle stewing keeps the chopped clams tender; high heat toughens clam protein and can make the cream sauce separate or turn grainy.

“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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