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Clam Soup

A creamy clam soup made with clams, butter, milk, flour, and mace, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the clams

  1. Drain the clams.

  2. Boil the clam liquor with the mace.

  3. Chop the clams.

  4. Skim the liquor as it boils for 5 minutes.

  5. Add the clams and water.

  6. Boil for another 5 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Cook the flour in the butter.

  2. Gradually add the scalded milk while stirring well.

  3. Remove the mace.

  4. Add the clams to the milk.

  5. Do not let it boil to prevent curdling.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

  7. Serve immediately.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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
Provide the main flavor and texture of the soup.
Butter
Carries flavor and enriches the soup with fat.
Flour
Cooked in the butter, it thickens the milk into a smooth base.
Milk
Forms the creamy body of the soup.

The step that matters

Do not let it boil after adding the milk. Boiling a milk-based soup can cause the milk proteins to curdle, leaving the texture grainy and separated. Keeping it hot but below boiling keeps it smooth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, butter, milk, pepper, flour. 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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