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Clam Soup

A soup made from clams, milk, butter, flour, water, pepper, and salt.

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. Boil the clams in 1 quart of water for 1 hour.

  2. Remove the clams, chop them finely, and set aside.

Make the soup

  1. Combine 1 quart of milk, ½ teaspoon of pepper, and 1 teaspoon of salt. Adjust salt to taste.

  2. Rub 1 tablespoon of butter with 2 tablespoons of flour to form a cream. Add the butter‑flour mixture to the milk and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the chopped clams and boil for 5 minutes.

  4. If desired, strain the soup through a sieve to remove clam pieces.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clam + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together636 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

Clams
Provide the main flavor and texture of the soup; boiling them first releases their taste into the water.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and adds body and mild sweetness.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the milk as a roux, and butter carries flavor and adds richness.

The step that matters

Adding the butter-flour mixture to the milk. Flour must be fully blended into the butter first and the milk kept moving while heating; otherwise the flour clumps and the soup stays lumpy instead of smoothly thickened.

“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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