Clam species belonging to the family Veneridae (Mollusca: Bivalvia) represent very important marine products, especially in the European countries. The increasing economic interest in marine edible molluscs has strongly enhanced the need for a routine method of unambiguous recognition of species in fresh and preserved material, mainly intended to prevent mislabelling and commercial frauds. Here a procedure for identification of soft parts is proposed, by means of SDS-PAGE total protein patterning. In fresh material, this technique allowed recognition of four main regions of diagnostic bands, which have been named V1 (111–99 kDa), V2 (44 kDa), V3 (33–30 kDa) and V4 (19–13 kDa). The main diagnostic region appears to be the V3 band series. SDS-PAGE analysis allows the same technique to be used with denatured samples, such as cooked and preserved soft parts, giving reproducible results, very similar to those of fresh material.