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Clam Cakes

Clam cakes are batter made with chopped clams, eggs, baking soda, flour, and clam water, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Clam Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped clams and their water.

  2. Add the eggs and baking soda, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add flour until a batter consistency is achieved.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry spoonfuls of the batter in hot oil until 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.

  1. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Clam + flourtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together576 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Clam + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together337 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Clams
Provide the main flavor and moisture for the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during frying to give the cakes structure.
Baking soda
Reacts to lighten the batter, helping the cakes rise and brown.
Flour
Its starch and proteins give the batter body so the cakes hold together.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the batter soaks up oil before its starches and proteins set, leaving the cakes greasy and pale instead of golden brown.

“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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