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Clam Pot-pie

A savory pie made with clams, broth, butter, pepper, sea salt, and raised biscuit dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Pot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Wash and clean the clams, then boil them in 1 quart of water.

  2. Remove the clams when the shells open.

Make the pot pie

  1. Add 3 quarts of water to the clam juice and season with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the clams and the raised biscuit dough.

  3. Cover tightly and boil for 1 hour.

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. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Clam + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Clams
Main ingredient that releases its juices, giving the broth its briny, savory flavor.
Raised biscuit dough
Cooks in the simmering broth to form a soft, dumpling-like topping that absorbs liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the broth, rounding out its flavor.

The step that matters

Remove the clams when the shells open. Prolonged heat makes the proteins in clam meat tighten and turn rubbery, so clams cooked past the point of opening become tough.

“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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