Skip to main content
Main

Clam Fritters

A clam batter thickened with flour and butter, boiled and seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Clam Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the batter using more flour than you would for oyster fritters, as clams are moister.

  2. Boil the clams briefly in their own liquor.

Make the batter

  1. Add 2 cups of milk for every quart of clams.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Thicken the mixture with 1 tablespoon of flour and 1 tablespoon of butter, smoothed together.

  4. Boil once more to cook the flour.

  5. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  6. Serve hot.

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

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

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

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

  3. Clam + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Clams
Provide the main body and flavour of the fritters, releasing moisture as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the fritters structure so they hold together.
Milk
Adds liquid and richness, turning the mixture into a creamy, thickened base.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and smooths into the flour to help it thicken evenly.

The step that matters

Boil once more to cook the flour. Raw flour tastes pasty and floury. Cooking it fully after thickening removes that raw taste and lets the starch swell properly, giving a smooth, stable batter.

“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.

You might also like

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes