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Clam Bouillon

A soup of clam broth with small clam balls, thickened with cornstarch and garnished with celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Clam Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind the clams and strain through a colander.

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolk, milk, flour, baking powder, and salt to form a stiff dough.

  3. Shape the mixture into small balls.

Make the bouillon

  1. In a pot, bring the clam broth and water to a boil.

  2. Drop the balls into the boiling broth.

  3. Add cornstarch to thicken slightly.

  4. Serve with short pieces of celery for garnish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 clam flavor of the broth.
Egg yolk
Binds the dough and adds richness to the dumpling balls.
Flour
Gives the dough structure so the balls hold their shape in the broth.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, lightening the texture of the balls.
Cornstarch
Thickens the broth slightly as it heats.

The step that matters

Drop the balls into the boiling broth. The dough must be stiff enough to hold its shape. Adding it to a rapidly boiling liquid sets the outside quickly, while a loose mixture would disperse and cloud the broth.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, egg, milk, 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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