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Deviled Clams

A baked clam dish with onions, parsley, milk, broth, flour, paprika, and butter, topped with cracker crumbs.

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 ↓

Deviled Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Fry the onions in the butter until brown.

  2. Add the parsley and milk to the onions and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir the flour smooth in a little clam broth, then add the rest of the broth, clams, and paprika.

  4. Stir all into the boiling mixture and let it boil once.

  5. Remove from heat and let cool.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill large, round clam shells with the mixture.

  2. Cover with cracker crumbs and small bits of butter.

  3. Bake until brown and serve hot.

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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Clam + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 seafood flavor and the substance of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the topping brown in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the broth and milk into a smooth, spoonable sauce when boiled.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the filling its body.
Onions
Browned in butter, they add sweetness and a savory flavor base.

The step that matters

Stir the flour smooth in broth before adding it. Flour added straight to hot liquid clumps. Mixing it smooth in cool broth first lets the starch disperse, and boiling it once then thickens the sauce evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, parsley, butter, milk, 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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