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Clams with Green Peppers

A savory clam dish simmered with butter, onions, green peppers, clam juice, and paprika, served over hot buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Clams with Green Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the clam mixture

  1. In a chafing dish, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the chopped onion and green peppers, cooking without browning.

  3. Stir in the strained clam juice, salt, and paprika.

  4. Add the finely chopped clams and simmer for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture over hot buttered toast.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + clamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 flavor and the bulk of the mixture.
Clam juice
Adds liquid and concentrated seafood flavor to the mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the softened vegetables.
Green peppers
Add a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavor and some texture.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Cooking the onion and peppers without browning. Gentle heat softens the vegetables and builds sweetness without caramelizing their sugars, which would add brown, bitter notes that clash with the delicate clam flavor.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, 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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