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Deviled Clams

A baked dish of clams, tomatoes, onions, butter, spices, and crackers topped with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Deviled Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the sliced onion in 1 tablespoon of butter until light brown.

  2. Strain out the onion.

  3. Return the hot butter to the fire, add the chopped tomatoes, salt, sugar, paprika, and nutmeg. Stir for 3 minutes.

  4. Add 1 teaspoon of butter rolled in ½ teaspoon of flour to the mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix in the chopped clams with the butter and tomatoes.

  2. Fill buttered scallop shells or a buttered pudding dish with the mixture.

  3. Sift fine-crushed crackers over the top. Add tiny dabs of butter.

  4. Bake until delicately browned.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + clamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Clams
Provide the main protein and seafood flavor of the filling.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that give the filling its body and tang.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the crumbs and filling brown.
Crackers
Form a crisp, browned crust on top of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and tomato mixture slightly as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the tomato mixture. Adding flour-thickened butter to hot liquid without stirring can leave lumps. Stirring keeps the flour dispersed so the filling thickens smoothly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, sugar, nutmeg, flour, clam. 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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