Name: Fried Clams
Ingredients: large, fresh clams; 1 beaten egg; powdered cracker; coarse sea salt; black pepper; butter for frying

Why it works: Clam and butter work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 840 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fried Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Remove clams from their shells and dry them with a napkin.
Dip the clams in the beaten egg.
Coat the clams in powdered cracker and season with salt and pepper.
Fry the clams in hot butter until they are a rich 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.

Clam + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together840 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Clam + peppertop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together952 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Clam + eggtop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together337 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).