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Clam Fritters

A fried batter of clams, flour, baking soda, clam juice, eggs, butter, and pepper.

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

Clam Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift the flour and baking soda together three times.

  2. Stir the clam juice into the flour, then add the chopped clams and pepper.

  3. Mix in the beaten eggs and whip the batter vigorously until light.

Fry and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a hot frying pan.

  2. Drop large spoonfuls of the mixture into the pan, keeping them separate.

  3. Fry until rich brown on both sides and serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter that holds the fritters together.
Baking soda
Releases gas in the batter so the fritters rise and become light.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set.
Clams
Provide the main flavor and a tender, chewy texture within the batter.
Butter
Conducts heat in the pan and promotes browning on the fritter surfaces.

The step that matters

Whipping the batter until light. Vigorous whipping incorporates air and develops the batter's structure, helping the fritters rise and stay light. Under-mixed batter yields dense fritters, while overworking can make them tough, so the batter should be beaten until just light and airy.

“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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