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Clam Soup

A soup made with clams, water, flour, butter, milk, eggs, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the clams and place them in a basin.

  2. Add 3 quarts of water and bring to a boil.

  3. Once boiling, add the chopped clams and boil for 3 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Stir in 4 tablespoons of flour and 4 tablespoons of butter.

  2. Add 1 pint of milk and pepper to taste.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in 3 beaten eggs.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, allowing each person to season with salt as 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Thickens the soup as it combines with butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the broth.
Eggs
Enrich and thicken the soup slightly when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten eggs off the heat. Eggs thicken by coagulating when heated, so adding them over high heat can curdle them and leave bits in the soup. Removing the pan from the heat first lets them thicken gently and smoothly.

“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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