Skip to main content
Main

Clam Soup

A soup made with clams, clam liquor, water, milk, butter, flour, crackers, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Put the clam liquor and water in a pot over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped clams and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and butter, then bring to a boil again.

  4. Stir in the boiling hot milk.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the flour with cold milk to a cream.

  2. Add the cream to the soup.

  3. Alternatively, add the rolled crackers instead of flour.

  4. Season with mace and lemon juice if 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 flavour and body of the soup as they release their savoury juices.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the broth.
Milk
Makes the soup creamy and mellow, softening the briny clam flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when mixed with cold milk and heated.
Crackers
Can replace flour as a thickener, adding body and a little toasted grain flavour.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with cold milk before adding it. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch surface gelatinises unevenly. Blending it smooth with cold milk first lets the starch disperse so the soup thickens evenly.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, pepper, butter, milk, flour, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

More clam soup recipes

Mock 5Philadelphia 3 See all 191 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes