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Clam Fritters

A fried batter of clams, flour, milk, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the egg until light.

  2. Stir the milk into the flour, then add the beaten egg.

  3. Mix in the prepared clams.

Fry

  1. Heat the fat in a frying pan and drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot fat.

  2. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + clamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together636 recipes

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

  5. Flour + clamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together576 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk 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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness so the fritters hold together when fried.
Prepared flour
Forms the structure of the batter, setting firm as the fritters cook.
Milk
Loosens the flour into a batter and adds moisture to the fritters.
Clams
Provide the main flavour and chewy texture throughout each fritter.

The step that matters

Frying the spoonfuls in hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping. Hot fat sets the outside quickly, so the fritters brown and stay light inside.

“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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