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Clams with Cream

Clams with Cream is a simple seafood dish of clams simmered in butter, flour, clam liquor, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Clams with Cream

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the clams not too fine and season with pepper and salt.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew-pan, melt the butter until it bubbles.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Gradually stir in the clam liquor, then add the clams.

  4. Stew for two to three minutes, then add the boiling cream.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Clam + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 texture of the dish, with their own briny liquor.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the base before the flour is added.
Flour
Thickens the butter and clam liquor into a smooth, binding sauce.
Clam liquor
Adds the clams' natural briny flavour and liquid to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, mellowing the sauce into a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the cream. The cream should be boiling when added so it does not cool the sauce or stall the thickening. Cooking the flour a few minutes first removes its raw taste and helps it thicken smoothly.

“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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