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Clam Puree

A creamy clam soup made with clams, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Clam Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Prepare and clean the clams by removing the gills.

  2. Cook the clams until the edges curl, then remove the siphons and chop them finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a white sauce by melting 13 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour and stir well, then gradually add 1 pint of milk while stirring.

  3. Cook until the sauce thickens and there is no taste of raw starch.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the chopped clams and strained clam juice to the sauce and heat through.

  2. Serve immediately, adding Worcestershire Sauce if desired.

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

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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 flavour and texture of the puree once chopped finely.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, adding richness to the puree.
Flour
Thickens the milk with its starch to form a white sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, giving body and creaminess.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until no raw starch taste remains. Flour must be cooked in the hot fat and liquid so its starch swells and thickens fully. Undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste that the clams cannot hide.

“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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