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Bisque of Clams

A creamy soup made from stewed clams, milk, butter, flour, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Bisque of Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Stew the clams in their own liquor with added water for 15 minutes.

  2. Squeeze each clam to extract juice, discarding the shells.

Make the white sauce

  1. Boil the cream or rich milk in a separate pot.

  2. In a small saucepan, melt the butter and flour until bubbling.

  3. Gradually stir in the boiling milk, mixing continuously.

Finish the bisque

  1. Strain the clams and their liquor into the white sauce, pressing to extract as much juice as possible.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then remove from heat.

  3. Beat the egg yolk with 2 tablespoons of the soup, then stir it into the rest of the soup while it is boiling, but do not let it boil afterward.

  4. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and lemon juice if desired.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Clam + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Clams
Provide the main seafood flavor and body of the soup.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the bisque.
Butter
Fat that cooks with the flour to form a smooth roux.
Flour
Thickens the white sauce so the bisque becomes velvety.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the soup, adding body and silkiness when heated gently.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens by gently coagulating when heated. If the soup boils after it is added, the yolk can curdle and turn grainy, so the mixture must stay below boiling once the yolk goes in.

“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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