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Hard Shell Clams Fried

Fried hard shell clams coated in flour or crackers and cooked in lard or beef dripping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and beef work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 319 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Hard Shell Clams Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the clams in their own liquor.

Fry

  1. Dip each clam in wheat flour or rolled crackers.

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

  3. Alternatively, dip each clam in batter made for clam fritters before frying.

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. Wheat + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Clam + beeftop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together58 recipes

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

  3. Clam + wheattop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27 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
Serve as the main ingredient that is cooked whole in the dish.
Wheat flour or rolled crackers
Forms a dry coating that helps the clam surface brown and crisp when fried.
Hot lard or beef dripping
Conducts heat to fry the coated clams, giving them browning and a rich, fatty flavor.

The step that matters

Fry the clams in hot lard or beef dripping. The fat must be hot enough to crisp the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy before the clam is heated through.

“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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