Skip to main content
Main

Bisque of Clams

A creamy soup made from clams, beef stock, rice, herbs, and hot cream, served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bisque of Clams

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the clams in their own juice and chop them finely.

  2. Heat the beef stock to boiling.

Make the bisque

  1. Cook the rice with the bouquet of herbs, pepper, and salt until done.

  2. Add the clams and half the juice to the rice.

  3. Stir in the hot cream.

  4. Strain the mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve with snippets of toast.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Clam + ricetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Clam + beeftop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard shell clams
Provide the main flavour and body of the bisque.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the other ingredients.
Rice
Cooked until tender, it thickens the soup and gives it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture.

“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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipes