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Clam Soup, with Milk

A clam soup made with milk, fat, flour, parsley, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Clam Soup, with Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux

  1. Rub Cottolene and flour together until smooth, then add 1 cup of milk.

Cook the soup

  1. In a stew pan, bring the remaining milk to a boil.

  2. Stir in the flour and Cottolene mixture briskly.

  3. Let it boil for several minutes, then add the clams.

  4. Boil everything together for 5 minutes.

  5. Add parsley and 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clam + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together232 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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 savory flavor and texture of the soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and gives it a creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the soup body.
Cottolene
Fat that coats the flour so it blends smoothly and adds richness.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and fat mixture into the boiling milk. Flour clumps if dropped into hot liquid unblended. Stirring briskly while adding it disperses the starch so it thickens the milk evenly rather than forming lumps.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Jalapenofits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

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