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Clam Soup

A soup made from clams, flour, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Wash the clams and cover them with cold water.

  2. Bring the water to a boil until the clams open.

  3. Chop the clams finely and skim the water they were boiled in.

Make the soup

  1. Mix the flour with a little water to form a paste.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and add the milk.

  3. Combine the clam mixture with the flour paste and egg mixture.

  4. Bring the entire mixture to a boil.

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. Flour + eggtop 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. Clam + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together636 recipes

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

  5. Clam + flourtop 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

Clams
Provide the main flavour and body of the soup once chopped and cooked in their liquor.
Flour
Thickens the soup into a smooth, lightly bodied texture as it heats.
Eggs
Add richness and help enrich and thicken the soup when combined with milk.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the saltiness of the clam broth.

The step that matters

Bringing the combined mixture to a boil. Egg-thickened liquids can curdle or scramble if they get too hot too fast. Heating gently and watching closely keeps the soup smooth, while the flour paste needs to be fully heated to lose its raw starchy taste.

“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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