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Plain Clam Soup

A soup made from clams, water or milk, butter, flour, marjoram, pepper, dumplings, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plain Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Put the clams into a large pot of boiling water to open their shells.

  2. Remove the clams as they open and extract the meat, saving the liquor.

Make the soup

  1. Mix the liquor with water or milk and thicken with butter rolled in flour.

  2. Add sweet marjoram and whole pepper to the pot over medium heat.

  3. Make small round dumplings from flour and butter, about the size of a hickory nut.

  4. Add the dumplings to the soup and bring to a boil.

  5. Once boiling, add the clams and boil for one hour.

  6. Remove the sweet marjoram before serving.

  7. Add toasted bread to the soup before serving.

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. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Clams
Provide the main flavor and the meat that makes the soup substantial.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the liquid into a body-rich soup as the flour cooks.
Flour for dumplings
Forms the dumplings, giving them structure so they hold together while simmering.
Sweet marjoram
Adds a mild, aromatic herbal fragrance to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil the clams for one hour. Prolonged boiling toughens clam meat and can make it rubbery, so the clams are cooked for a long time only as the recipe directs, and the broth should be kept at a steady simmer.

Swap the marjoram

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, milk, butter, flour, pepper, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Marjoramthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, milk, butter, flour, pepper, bread. 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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