Skip to main content
Drink

Clam Cocktails

A chilled appetizer of shucked clams mixed with Tabasco, lemon juice, ketchup, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Clam Cocktails

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Shuck the clams and place them in a small glass.

  2. Add Tabasco sauce, lemon juice, tomato ketchup, and salt.

  3. Mix thoroughly and serve ice cold.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Clam + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Clams
Provide the main body and briny flavor of the cocktail.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness, acidity, and a red color to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness of the ketchup.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, sauce, tomato, ketchup. 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.

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipesLemon EssenceLemon Essence8 recipes