Skip to main content
Main

Clam Soup

A soup made from clams, water, mace, peppercorns, butter, flour, and boiling milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Make the broth

  1. Put 30 clams in a pot with 4 quarts of water.

  2. Boil for 2 hours.

  3. Remove clams and chop them finely.

  4. Return chopped clams to the pot and add mace and peppercorns.

  5. Boil for 1 hour longer.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a bowl, rub together butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Stir in 1 pint of boiling milk until well combined.

  3. After 3 hours of boiling, pour the soup into a tureen.

  4. Stir in the thickened milk.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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
Release their juices and flavor into the water, forming the base of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk and gives the soup a smoother, fuller body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps blend the flour into a smooth paste.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the broth's briny taste.

The step that matters

Rubbing butter and flour until smooth. Mixing flour with fat before adding liquid coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly. Skipping this step can leave lumps that do not dissolve when the milk is added.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

More clam soup recipes

Mock 5Philadelphia 3 See all 191 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes