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Florida Clam Bisque

A creamy soup made from clams, veal stock, vegetables, rice, and milk, topped with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Florida Clam Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Drain the liquor from the clams and place it in a pot with veal stock, onion, carrot, bay leaf, celery, and parsley.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 15 minutes, then strain out the vegetables.

  3. Add the soaked rice to the liquor and cook for 20 minutes.

  4. Chop the clams finely and add them to the pot, simmering for an additional 20 minutes.

Make the milk base and serve

  1. In a separate vessel, cook the hot milk with butter and corn starch in boiling water for 10 minutes.

  2. Pour the milk mixture into a tureen and add the clam bisque.

  3. Top with croutons before serving.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

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

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 the meaty texture of the bisque.
Soaked rice
Thickens the broth as its starch softens during simmering.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, glossy base.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the milk mixture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the finished bisque.

The step that matters

Cooking the corn starch milk mixture. Corn starch must be fully heated in liquid to gelatinize and thicken; if it is under-heated it stays grainy and thin, and if it boils too hard or sits too long it can break down and thin out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, veal, carrot, celery, parsley, rice, milk):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, veal, carrot, celery, parsley, rice, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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