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Clam Soup

A simple clam soup made with clams, water, milk, butter, flour, crackers, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Drain the liquor from the clams and put it in a pot with ½ cup of water.

  2. Add the chopped clams and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then add a piece of butter.

  4. Bring to a boil again and add 1 quart of boiling hot milk.

  5. Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with a little cold milk or 2 finely rolled crackers.

  6. Optionally, add a little mace and lemon juice for extra flavor.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 flavor and body of the soup as they cook in their own liquor.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and gives it a mild sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a fuller body.
Crackers
Add body and help thicken the soup as they break down in the liquid.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour mixture while the milk is hot. Flour mixed with cold milk disperses without lumps when stirred into hot liquid. Added to a dry or cold pot, it clumps, and the soup stays grainy and uneven in texture.

Swap the mace

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

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

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