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Soup

Clam Bisque

A creamy soup made with milk, butter, flour, salt, cayenne pepper, and clams.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Clam Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat 1 quart of milk to boiling.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of butter with 2 tablespoons of flour to form a cream.

  3. Add the cream mixture to the boiling milk and stir until it thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  2. Stir in 3 cups of finely chopped clams and let boil once.

  3. Serve with crackers.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + clamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + clamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together636 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the bisque and gives it a creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and carries the flour into a smooth paste.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk as the starch swells when heated, giving the bisque body.
Clams
Provide the main seafood flavor and tender texture in the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour-butter cream to boiling milk. Stirring constantly as the cream goes in helps flour disperse without lumps, since starch clumps when added to hot liquid unevenly. Once the starch swells, the bisque thickens evenly.

“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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