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Lucines Papillons a LA Mariniere — Soft Clams

Soft clams simmered in cream and butter, served with dry toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lucines Papillons a LA Mariniere — Soft Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Remove the hard part from the clams and place them in a saucepan with their own juice.

  2. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat and skim off the scum.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cream and thicken lightly with butter kneaded with flour.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve with dry 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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
Form the main body of the dish, releasing their juices to flavor the broth.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded body to the broth.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps bind the flour into a smooth thickener.
Flour
Thickens the broth when kneaded with butter and stirred into the liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken lightly with the butter and flour. Flour lumps if dropped in raw, so knead it fully into the butter and stir it in gently. Simmering the liquid after adding it lets the starch swell evenly and cook out its raw taste.

“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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