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Soup

Clam Bisque

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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. Steam the clams until the shells open, then remove the clams from their shells and chop them finely.

  2. Strain the clam liquor, heat it, and skim off any foam.

Make the bisque

  1. In a separate pot, heat the milk and stir in the butter mixed with the flour.

  2. Cook for 5 minutes after it starts boiling.

  3. Season with cayenne pepper, then add the hot clam liquor and chopped clams.

  4. Heat until just before boiling, then stir in the soup.

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. Clam + buttertop 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. Clam + milktop 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

Clams
Provide the main flavour and texture of the bisque.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the bisque.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour in the base.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a smooth base.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the milk. Flour clumps if it is added to hot liquid without being fully mixed into the butter first, and clumps are hard to smooth out later. Stirring steadily keeps the thickened base smooth.

“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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