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Roast Clams

Roast Clams is a dish of clams cooked in a hot pan until shells open, served with lemon juice and ketchup or chili sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,592 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Roast Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the clams

  1. Wash the clams and place them unopened in a baking pan.

  2. Set the pan on the top of a very hot range.

  3. Cook until the shells open wide.

  4. Remove the upper shell.

  5. Transfer the lower shell with the clam and juice to a hot platter.

Serve

  1. Squeeze a few drops of lemon juice on each clam.

  2. Serve the clams in the shells.

  3. Pass tomato ketchup or chili sauce with them.

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 + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Clam + tomatotop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Clam + lemontop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together152 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
Provide the main ingredient; their shells open as they cook, releasing their own juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, briny flavor of the clams.
Tomato ketchup or chili sauce
Offered at the table as a sweet-tangy condiment to season each clam.

The step that matters

Cook until the shells open wide. Clams that stay closed may be dead or not fully cooked, and the shells are the cue for doneness. Heat should be high and steady so the clams open quickly and stay tender rather than toughening from overcooking.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, tomato):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, tomato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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