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Clam Pot-pie

A savory pie made with clams, pork, onions, potatoes, and a yeast dough crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Clam Pot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean clams, removing black heads and separating bellies. Chop heads and rims.

  2. Strain clam water and set aside.

  3. Fry pork slices until crispy; remove from pot.

  4. Sauté chopped onions in pork fat until cooked.

Assemble

  1. Layer pot with pork, onions, potatoes, clams, pepper, salt, and flour.

  2. Add cloves and fill pot with boiling water to the edge.

Make the crust and cook

  1. Make soft dough with flour, butter, and dissolved yeast; let rise twice.

  2. Roll out dough and place on top of boiling pot, making a hole for steam.

  3. Cook for 30 minutes; remove crust and stir in clam bellies; boil for 1 minute.

  4. Add water if needed for gravy and season to taste.

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 + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Clam + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raw clams
Provide the main seafood flavour and, with their liquor, the savoury base of the gravy.
Fat pork
Renders fat for frying the onions and adds savoury, crisp-edged richness.
Potatoes
Thicken the gravy as they cook and add body to the filling.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the gravy and forms the soft, elastic dough for the crust.
Yeast cake
Leavens the dough so the crust rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dough, tenderising the crumb.

The step that matters

Cooking the crust over boiling liquid. The dough must be laid on a boiling pot and vented with a steam hole. Steam needs an escape, or the crust turns soggy and the gravy stays thin and uneven.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, pork, onion, potato, pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, pork, onion, potato, pepper, flour, butter. 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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