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Hard Shxll Clams Frixd

Fried hard shell clams with salt pork, spices, and a sauce of flour, butter, wine, and catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Hard Shxll Clams Frixd

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the clams in their own liquor.

  2. Dip the clams in wheat flour or rolled crackers.

  3. Fry the clams in hot lard or beef dripping without salt.

  4. Fry three or four slices of salt pork until brown.

  5. Cut each clam into five or six slices and flour them.

Layer and stew

  1. Layer the clams in the pork fat, sprinkling with pepper and a little salt.

  2. Add cloves, mace, and sliced onions if desired.

  3. Layer on several pieces of fried pork and crackers soaked in cold water.

  4. Repeat the layering process until all clams are used.

  5. Add enough water to just cover the clams and cover with a heated lid.

  6. Stew the clams for about twenty minutes.

Finish the gravy

  1. Mix a couple of teaspoons of flour with a little water and stir it into the gravy.

  2. Add a little butter, pepper, half a pint of white wine, spices, and catsup to improve the dish.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Clam + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Large sand clams
Provide the main body of the dish, cooked until tender in the layers.
Wheat flour
Coats the clams and thickens the gravy as it cooks.
Salt pork
Its rendered fat seasons and browns the clams during frying.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Stew the clams for about twenty minutes. Stewing with just enough water and a covered lid keeps the clams moist and tender. Too much heat or uncovered cooking can toughen the clams and reduce the gravy too quickly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, wheat, beef, pork, pepper, clove, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, wheat, beef, pork, pepper, clove, 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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