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Clam Broth

A simple broth made by simmering clams in salted water with pepper and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Clam Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the clams thoroughly.

  2. Place the clams in a pot with water.

  3. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer until the clams open.

  2. Strain the broth and 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. Clam + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Clam + peppertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together952 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Clams
Release their juices and natural salinity into the water, flavouring the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded fat flavour to the finished broth.

The step that matters

Simmer until the clams open. Simmering only until the clams open keeps them tender. Overcooking toughens the proteins, making them rubbery and releasing less flavour into the broth.

“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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