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Clams with Cream

Clams with cream is a simple seafood dish of clams simmered in butter, flour, clam juice, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Clams with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the clams not very fine.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir well; cook for a few moments without coloring.

  3. Gradually add the hot clam juice, then the chopped clams.

  4. Stew for 3 to 5 minutes.

  5. Add the cream and pepper, and salt if needed.

  6. Bring to a boil and serve.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 body and flavor of the dish once chopped and stewed in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked briefly with the butter to form a roux.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded texture.
Clam juice
Supplies the liquid for the sauce and reinforces the clam flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter. Cooking the flour briefly without browning cooks out its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. Browning would change the color and flavor of the cream sauce.

“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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