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Clam Broth

Clam Broth is a simple soup made with clams, clam juice or hot water, cayenne, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Clam Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain and finely chop the clams.

Make the broth

  1. In a pot, combine the chopped clams with clam juice or hot water.

  2. Add a pinch of cayenne and the butter.

  3. Heat gently until warmed through.

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. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clam + walnuttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Clams
Provide the main savory flavor and briny, seafood character of the broth.
Clam juice
Adds concentrated clam flavor and liquid to the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the broth.

The step that matters

Heating gently. Clams toughen and turn rubbery when overheated, so the broth should be warmed only until heated through and kept from a hard boil.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, butter. 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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