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Minced Cream Clams

Cream clams cooked with flour, butter, clams, clam juice, red pepper, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Minced Cream Clams

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, cook flour and butter over water until bubbling.

  2. Slowly add chopped clams and clam juice, along with red pepper.

  3. Simmer for 10 to 15 minutes.

  4. Add cream, bring to a boil, and serve.

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. Butter + clamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and clam liquid into a smooth, creamy base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the flour thicken.
Hard clams
Provide the main seafood flavour and tender texture in the cream.
Clam juice
Adds concentrated clam flavour and liquid to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Adding the clams and clam juice slowly. Adding liquid slowly to the hot flour and butter lets the roux blend smoothly. Adding it all at once can leave lumps, so the sauce will not thicken evenly.

“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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