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Clam Bake

A method of cooking clams by roasting them on a rock with sage, butter, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clam and butter work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 840 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Clam Bake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bake

  1. Lay the clams on a rock, edge downward, forming a circle.

  2. Cover them with fine brush, then dry sage, and finally larger brush.

Cook

  1. Set the whole on fire and let it burn until the brush and sage are more than half burnt.

  2. Check the clams by pulling some out; if done, brush off the fire and cinders.

Serve

  1. Mix tomato sauce or cauliflower sauce or catsup with the clams after removing them from their shells.

  2. Add butter and spices to taste and serve.

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

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

  2. Sage + tomatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together417 recipes

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

  3. Sage + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,312 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Clams
Provide the main protein, cooked in their shells over the fire until done.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the clams a smooth, savoury coating.
Tomato sauce or cauliflower sauce or catsup
Adds moisture and tangy sweetness to the shelled clams.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, tomato, butter. 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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