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Stewed Clams

A simple stew of clams cooked in water or milk, seasoned with white pepper and thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Stewed Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Wash the clams thoroughly.

  2. Place clams in a large pot with ½ cup hot water.

  3. Heat over fire until shells open.

  4. Remove clams and cut off the inedible fringe with scissors.

Stew and serve

  1. Put clams in a stew pan with the broth and boil slowly until tender.

  2. Season with white pepper and thicken gravy with flour mixed into melted butter.

  3. Alternatively, boil 1 pint of milk with a dash of white pepper and a small pat of butter.

  4. Add clams to the boiling milk and serve immediately.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clam + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together636 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

Butter and flour 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

Round clams
Provide the main ingredient, becoming tender through slow simmering in their own broth.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when mixed into melted butter and stirred into the broth.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the alternative version, gently cooking the clams.
Melted butter
Carries the flour smoothly into the broth and adds richness to the gravy.

The step that matters

Boil the clams slowly until tender. Clams turn tough and rubbery when overcooked, while slow simmering lets their muscle fibres soften gently.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, milk, butter, flour. 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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