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 ↓
Boiled Clams
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and cook
Wash the clams thoroughly.
Boil the clams until the shells open.
Serve
Remove the clams from the shells and serve in a covered dish with their own liquor.
Provide a small dish of melted butter for each person.
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).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Clams
- Main ingredient; boiling cooks the meat and opens the shells, releasing their own flavourful liquor.
- Melted butter
- Served as a dipping sauce, adding richness and fat that complements the mild, briny clam flavour.
The step that matters
Boil only until the shells open. Clam meat turns tough and rubbery when overcooked. Heating just until the shells open cooks the flesh gently while keeping it tender and juicy.
“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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