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Stewed Soft Clams

Stewed Soft Clams is a dish of clams simmered in milk, butter, cracker dust, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Stewed Soft Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove shells and trim off tough parts of the clams.

Stew

  1. Place clams in a dish with butter and heat until hot.

  2. Add boiling milk, cracker dust, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Simmer for three minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Clam + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together636 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Clams
Provide the main protein and sweet, briny flavor of the stew.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the stew its body and mild sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when the clams are first heated.
Cracker dust
Thickens the milk slightly as it simmers, giving the stew more body.

The step that matters

Simmer for three minutes. Milk can scorch or curdle if it boils hard or simmers too long over high heat. Keeping the heat gentle and the time brief keeps the milk smooth while the cracker dust thickens it and the clams stay tender.

“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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