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Clam Soup

A creamy clam soup made with clam juice, milk, butter, flour, and chopped clams, served hot with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Clam Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Remove clams from shells as soon as they open and place them in a warm spot.

Make the soup

  1. Combine clam juice and hot milk in a pot.

  2. In a separate pan, make a roux by melting butter and stirring in flour until smooth.

  3. Add roux to clam juice and milk mixture, stirring until thickened.

  4. Stir in chopped clams, season with salt, and bring soup to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, adding two spoonfuls of whipped cream to each bowl.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Clam juice
Provides the main liquid and the briny, seafood flavour of the soup.
Milk
Adds body and creaminess to the broth as it is heated.
Butter
Carries fat into the roux and adds richness to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when cooked with butter into a roux.
Clams
Supply the chopped seafood texture and main flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the roux to the hot liquid. Flour lumps form if the roux is not smooth before it meets the liquid. Stirring while adding it lets the starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly rather than clumping.

“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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