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Steamed Clams

Steamed clams served with butter and cayenne or paprika in a heated cup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Steamed Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and steam

  1. Scrub the clams thoroughly.

  2. Arrange the clams in layers in a steamer above boiling water.

  3. Place a shallow dish underneath to catch the liquor.

  4. Steam for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the shells open.

Prepare the liquor

  1. Pour the liquor into small, heated cups.

  2. Add melted butter and several dashes of cayenne or paprika to the liquor.

Serve

  1. For serving, place a cup in the center of a heated soup plate.

  2. Heap steamed clams around the cup and add a slice of lemon.

  3. Serve as hot as possible.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Clam + lemontop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Soft-shell clams
Provide the main protein; steaming opens their shells and cooks the flesh through.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the hot clam liquor, carrying flavor and smoothing its taste.

The step that matters

Steam until the shells open. Clams that stay closed after steaming may be dead or undercooked, and overcooking toughens the flesh. Watch the shells rather than relying only on the clock.

“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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