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Deviled Clams

A baked clam dish with onion, tomato, butter, spices, and crushed crackers topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Deviled Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the sliced onion in butter until light brown, then strain out the onion.

  2. Return the hot butter to the fire and add the chopped tomatoes, salt, sugar, paprika, and nutmeg.

  3. Stir for three minutes, then add the butter rolled in flour.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix the clams with the butter and tomato mixture.

  2. Fill buttered scallop shells or a buttered pudding dish with the mixture.

  3. Sift fine-crushed crackers over the top and add tiny dabs of butter.

  4. Cook until delicately browned.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Clams
Provide the main seafood body and savory flavor of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and helping the topping brown.
Tomatoes
Provide moisture and acidity that form the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and tomato mixture into a smoother sauce.
Crackers
Form a crisp, golden crumb topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Cook until delicately browned. The cracker topping and butter dabs brown quickly, so the dish can scorch if left too long. Watching color, not just time, keeps the top golden and the filling hot.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, sugar, nutmeg, flour, clam):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, sugar, nutmeg, flour, clam. 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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