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Clam Soup.

A clam soup made with minced clams, onion, butter, spices, milk, and flour, simmered slowly and served lukewarm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Clam Soup.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the clam base

  1. Fry the minced onion in butter until soft.

  2. Add hot water, mace, cloves, allspice, and peppercorns; boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain into a saucepan, then add the chopped clams and clam juice or hot water.

  4. Simmer slowly for 2 hours, then strain again and rub the pulp through a sieve into the liquid.

  5. Keep the soup lukewarm.

Finish and serve

  1. In a separate saucepan, boil the milk, whisking it into the soup.

  2. Dissolve the flour in a little cold milk, add it to the soup, and adjust seasoning.

  3. Heat gently to just below boiling, then pour into a heated tureen.

  4. Serve with or without croutons.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hard shell clams
Provide the main seafood flavour and body as they simmer and release their juices into the broth.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the sharper briny taste of the clam broth.
Butter
Softens the onion and carries aroma from the aromatics into the soup.
Flour
Lightly thickens the soup so it feels smoother and less watery on the tongue.

The step that matters

Boiling the milk before adding it to the soup. Milk can curdle or scorch when it is overheated or added too quickly to hot liquid. Heating it separately and whisking it in slowly keeps the soup smooth. Dissolving the flour in cold milk first prevents lumps.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, onion, butter, clove, allspice, 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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