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Fried Soft Clams

A batter-coated clam dish fried in salt pork fat, served with a slice of broiled or fried salt pork.

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. In a bowl, mix the eggs, salt, lemon juice, cayenne, and melted butter.

  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 the clams and pork

  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.

Fry and serve

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

  2. Serve with a slice of broiled or fried salt 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 into a structure when the clams are fried.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture into a batter that coats the clams.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat to the batter, supporting browning.
Clams
Main ingredient, cooked in the batter-coated flour dredge until golden.
Salt pork
Renders fat for frying the clams and gives a savory flavor.

The step that matters

Fry the clams in the pork fat until golden brown. Fat at the right temperature cooks the coating quickly and crisply. If the fat is too cool, the clams soak up grease and turn heavy; if it is too hot, the coating browns before the clams are cooked through.

“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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