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Clam Soup

A creamy clam soup made with clams, milk, cream, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Boil clams in 1 pint of water with onion, cloves, salt, and cayenne pepper.

Make the milk base

  1. Heat the milk in a separate pot and thicken it with flour and butter creamed together.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the minced parsley and scalded cream to the soup before serving.

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. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Clam + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Clams
Provide the main flavor and body of the soup, releasing their juices into the broth as they cook.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the soup becomes creamy rather than watery.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps blend with flour to form a smooth thickener.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with flour and butter. Flour must be creamed fully with the butter before mixing into hot milk, otherwise it clumps. Starch granules need to be dispersed so they swell evenly and thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, milk, parsley, cream, butter, flour, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, milk, parsley, cream, butter, flour, onion. 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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