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Clam Bisque

A creamy clam soup made with clams, milk, cream, butter, flour, eggs, and seasoned with salt, cayenne, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Prepare the clams

  1. Chop the clams and place them in boiling water; simmer for 30 minutes.

Make the base

  1. Heat the milk, cream, baking soda, and cracker crumbs in another saucepan.

  2. Stir in the butter and flour mixture, boil for 1 minute, then gradually pour over the whipped egg yolks while beating continuously.

  3. Heat the mixture in a double boiler for 2 minutes or until the water in the outer pot boils vigorously, then pour into a tureen.

Combine and serve

  1. Season the clam mixture with salt, cayenne, and minced parsley, then add it to the milk mixture in the tureen.

  2. Top with the egg whites beaten to stiff peaks.

  3. When serving, dip the ladle deep into the bisque to ensure each plate has a layer of meringue.

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 flavour and body of the bisque.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the base through gentle heat; whites whipped to stiff peaks form the meringue topping.
Milk and cream
Form the creamy liquid base that gives the bisque its smooth, rich texture.
Cracker crumbs
Thicken the liquid and add body to the milk base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and softens the texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter mixture so the bisque holds body without becoming runny.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the hot mixture. Pouring hot liquid into yolks too quickly, or without constant beating, can scramble them. Gradual addition while beating tempers the yolks so they thicken smoothly instead.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clam, milk, cream, butter, flour, egg, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, milk, cream, butter, flour, egg, pepper. 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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