Crème fraîche creates a creamy broth in this recipe for briny-sweet steamed clams

A big bowl of steamed clams and juicy-crisp corn is summer eating at its finest. The combination is fresh, sweet and briny, almost like a chowder made for eating with your fingers.

In this recipe from our cookbook “ Milk Street 365: The All-Purpose Cookbook for Every Day of the Year,” we finish the clams and corn with a small measure of crème fraîche (or whole-milk yogurt); the briny-sweet liquid released by the clams becomes a subtly creamy broth that’s as delicious as the clams themselves.

Fennel perfumes the broth with anise-like notes.

Scrub the clams well before cooking and be sure to dispose of any with cracked or damaged shells. Give any clams with open shells a gentle tap and toss if they do not close within a few seconds.

If you can, use corn kernels cut from freshly shucked ears (you’ll need two good-size ears to get the 2