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Clam Bouillon

A clear broth made by boiling clams in water, seasoned with white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Clam and white pepper work together. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 47 recipes. The science ↓

Clam Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Scrub the clam shells with a brush and wash them until the water is clear.

  2. Place the clams in a saucepan and pour boiling water over them.

  3. Boil until the shells open.

Make the broth

  1. Remove the shells, leaving the clams in the saucepan.

  2. Let the clams boil slowly for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the liquid through a fine strainer, then through cheesecloth.

  4. Season the bouillon with white pepper.

  5. Dilute the bouillon with boiling water if it is too salty.

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. Clam + white peppertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together47 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Clams
Provide the main savory flavor and aroma of the broth as they simmer and release their juices.
Boiling water
Extracts flavor from the clams and sets the liquid volume of the finished broth.
White pepper
Adds a mild, gentle heat that seasons the broth without visible dark specks.

The step that matters

Boil until the shells open, then keep the simmer gentle. Clams that stay closed may be dead and spoil the broth, so discard any that do not open. A slow simmer extracts flavor without toughening the clams or making the broth cloudy.

“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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