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Oyster and Clam Fritters

A batter of flour, milk, eggs, and salt mixed with oysters and clams, then fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and clam work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 111 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Oyster and Clam Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine flour, milk, eggs, and salt in a bowl and beat well.

  2. Chop the clams and stir them into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a pan until hot.

  2. Add one oyster to each spoonful of batter, then drop the spoonfuls into the hot lard.

  3. Fry until golden brown.

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. Oyster + clamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

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

  2. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Forms the structure of the batter, setting into a firm fritter when fried.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set and hold its shape while frying.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter a smooth, pourable texture.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the fritters a crisp, browned surface.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard. The lard must be hot before the batter goes in. Hot fat sets the outside quickly and browns it, so the fritters stay crisp rather than soaking up grease and turning heavy.

“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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