Name: Boilbd Clams
Ingredients: 1 peck of clams; 2 quarts of water; pepper to taste; vinegar to taste

Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boilbd Clams

Ingredients

1 peck of clams
2 quarts of water
pepper to taste
vinegar to taste

Directions

Prepare

Wash and clean the clams thoroughly.
Place the clams in an iron pot with 2 quarts of water.

Cook and serve

Boil for 15 minutes.
Transfer the clams to a large deep dish for serving.
Allow each person to open their clams and enjoy them hot.
Serve with pepper and vinegar.

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.

Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Clam + peppertop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together952 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Clam + vinegartop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together39 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

Clams: Are the main ingredient, cooked in their own steam and liquid until they open.
Water: Forms the boiling liquid that cooks the clams and steams them open.

“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.