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Clam Soup

A soup made from clams, cream, and a roux of flour and butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Boil and strain the clams and their liquor.

Make the soup

  1. In a bowl, cream the flour with the butter.

  2. Add the cream to the clam mixture.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and mace.

  4. Combine the creamed flour and butter with the clam mixture.

  5. 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes

Flour and butter 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 body of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the broth.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps carry the flour into the soup.

The step that matters

Combine the creamed flour and butter with the clam mixture.. The flour-butter paste must be spread evenly through the hot liquid so the starch hydrates and thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, cream, flour, butter, 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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