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Fried Soft Clams

Fried Soft Clams are clams coated in a light batter and fried in pork fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fried Soft Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the eggs, salt, lemon juice, cayenne, and melted butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the milk to create a batter.

  3. Adjust thickness with clam broth if needed.

  4. Beat the mixture well to make it light.

Prepare and fry the clams

  1. Remove the shells from the clams and trim off tough parts.

  2. Dice the salt pork and fry it in a pan.

  3. Dredge the clams in flour.

  4. Fry the clams in the pork fat until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve the fried clams with a slice of broiled or fried fat pork.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Clam + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Butter + clamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and set during frying, giving the coating structure and body.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture into a batter that coats the clams evenly.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the batter, helping it brown and taste rounder.
Flour
Dries the clam surface so the batter adheres and crisps when fried.
Salt pork
Renders fat for frying and adds savory flavor to the clams.

The step that matters

Fry the clams in the pork fat until golden brown. Frying at a steady, hot temperature sets the batter quickly so it crisps without absorbing excess grease. Too cool a pan makes the coating soggy and greasy, while overcooking dries the clams and toughens them.

“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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