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Clam Soup

A soup made with clams, water, milk, flour, and served with crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Wash the clams to remove grit.

  2. Boil the clams in 1 pint of water until they open easily.

  3. Remove the clams and reserve a small amount of the cooking liquid.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the reserved liquid with ½ cup of milk.

  2. Thicken the mixture with 2 tablespoons of flour, stirring until smooth.

  3. Add the clams back into the pot and heat through.

  4. Serve with split crackers on top.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Clam + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together636 recipes

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

  3. Clam + flourtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together576 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a soft, rich body to the broth.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the soup becomes smooth and creamy.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour. Flour must be stirred in until smooth so it can hydrate evenly; added too quickly or unstirred, it clumps and leaves lumps instead of a smooth thickened soup.

“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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