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Clam Fritters

A fried batter of clams, flour, eggs, and clam juice, served with lemon and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Clam Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Steam the clams until the shells begin to open.

  2. Chop the clams finely and save the clam juice.

  3. In a mixing bowl, sift the pastry flour over the chopped clams.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs separately, then add the yolks to the clam juice and dissolved baking soda.

  2. Stir well and fold in the beaten egg whites, adding more flour if the batter is too thin.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the fat in a kettle, drop the batter by teaspoonfuls, and fry until golden brown on both sides.

  2. Serve with sliced lemon and garnish with parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clam + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together232 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 flavor and the bulk of the fritter filling.
Pastry flour
Forms the batter structure that holds the clams together while frying.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whipped whites lighten its texture.
Clam juice
Adds liquid and concentrated seafood flavor to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it rise and brown during frying.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites must be folded gently so the air whipped into them stays in the batter. Overmixing deflates the foam, leaving dense fritters instead of light, puffy ones.

“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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