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Hashed Little-neck Clams

A dish of finely hashed little-neck clams cooked with butter, chives, parsley, breadcrumbs, sherry, and served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Hashed Little-neck Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the clam mixture

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the hashed clams and their juice.

  3. Stir in the chopped chives and parsley.

  4. Cook over an open fire until it boils twice.

  5. Cover and thicken with bread crumbs.

  6. Add the sherry.

  7. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve on buttered toast.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Chive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Little-neck clams
Provide the main body and briny flavor of the topping.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the clam juice and butter, thickening the mixture into a spoonable texture.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a mellow, aromatic sweetness to the clams.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and gives a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cook until it boils twice. Boiling drives off excess liquid and cooks the clams through, while the bread crumbs need time to absorb the juice. Stopping early leaves the mixture watery; cooking too long toughens the clams.

Swap the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, butter, parsley, bread, sherry, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, butter, parsley, bread, sherry, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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