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Clam Cocktail

A dish of clams served in green pepper cases with a sauce of tomato catsup, vinegar, horseradish, lemon juice, and Tabasco.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Clam Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Cut the tops off the peppers and remove the seeds and membranes.

  2. Parboil the peppers.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the tomato catsup, vinegar, horseradish, lemon juice, and Tabasco sauce well.

  2. Pour the sauce over the clams.

Serve

  1. Serve 6 clams in each pepper case.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Clams
Provide the main seafood body and the tender texture of the cocktail.
Green peppers
Act as the serving case, holding the clams while parboiling softens their raw bite.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that cuts the richness of the clams.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sauce.
Tomato catsup
Adds sweetness and tang, giving the sauce body and a mild sweet-sour balance.
Horseradish
Adds pungent heat that lifts the sauce and complements the seafood.

The step that matters

Parboil the peppers. A brief parboil softens the peppers enough to be easy to eat while keeping them firm enough to hold the clams. Boiling too long makes them limp and watery, which dilutes the sauce and weakens the case.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, tomato, clam, vinegar, horseradish, sauce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, tomato, clam, vinegar, horseradish, sauce. 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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