Skip to main content
Main

Roast Clams

Clams roasted with butter and pepper, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clam and butter work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 840 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Roast Clams

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and cook

  1. Scrub the clams' shells.

  2. Stand them on their hinges on the stovetop and roast until firm.

  3. Break off one shell.

  4. Place a piece of butter on each clam.

  5. Serve hot.

Or bake

  1. Alternatively, place the clams in a baking pan and roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 15 minutes until firm.

Make the juice and serve

  1. Strain the juice into a sauceboat.

  2. Add a lump of butter and pepper.

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

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

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Clam + peppertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together952 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Clams
The main ingredient, whose flesh firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, melting into the clam juices to create a smooth sauce.
Pepper
Adds a sharp, aromatic bite that balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Roast until firm, then stop. Clam proteins tighten as they heat. Once the flesh is firm, further cooking squeezes out moisture and makes it rubbery, so removing them promptly keeps them tender and juicy.

“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.

More roasted clams recipes

in the Shell 3 See all 8 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes