Why it works: Clam and pork work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 305 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓
Clam Chowder
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the clams
Pour boiling water over the clams to cover them until the shells open.
Remove the clams from their shells and cut off the black heads.
Shake each clam in the scalding liquid to remove any sand.
Cook and serve
Layer the clams with the fried pork in a pan.
Fill the pan with the water used to scald the clams.
Cook and serve as fish chowder, adding salt to taste.
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.
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Clam + porktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together305 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Clams
- Provide the main seafood flavor and chewy texture of the chowder.
- Fried pork
- Adds fat and savory, browned flavor to the broth.
The step that matters
Shake each clam in the scalding liquid to remove any sand. Clams hold grit inside their shells, and sand left in the chowder becomes gritty and unpleasant to eat. Rinsing them in the warm liquid loosens and washes out the sand before cooking.
“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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