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Fried Clams

Fried clams coated in egg, cracker, and flour, then fried in butter or lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Fried Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Open the clams carefully in a bowl, saving the liquid and avoiding shell particles.

  2. Chop the clams coarsely and sprinkle with pepper.

Coat and fry

  1. Mix the egg with grated cracker and a little flour to thicken.

  2. Dip each clam into the mixture using a spoon.

  3. Fry the clams slowly in plenty of butter or lard.

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. Egg + flourtop 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. Pepper + flourtop 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

Egg
Binds the cracker and flour coating so it adheres to the clams.
Grated cracker
Forms the crumb coating that becomes crisp and golden when fried.
Flour
Thickens the egg mixture so it clings to each clam.
Clams
Provide the main filling inside the coating, with moisture from their liquid.

The step that matters

Frying slowly in plenty of fat. Frying slowly in ample hot fat lets the coating brown and crisp before the clams overcook and toughen. Too little fat or too much heat can scorch the coating while the centre stays cold or rubbery.

“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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