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Bisque of Clams

A creamy clam soup made with clams, broth, herbs, rice, and cream, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Bisque of Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the clams

  1. Open the clams and scald them in their own juice, then drain.

  2. Pound the clams in a mortar and return them to a saucepan with the same water.

Make the bisque

  1. Add the white broth, bouquet of herbs, raw rice, and pepper; boil for 45 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and add the cream.

  3. Heat gently without boiling, and serve with small squares of fried bread.

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. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  2. Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Clam + breadtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Clam + ricetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Clams
Provide the main shellfish flavour and body of the bisque.
White broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the dish.
Raw rice
Cooks down during boiling to thicken the bisque.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture at the end.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Once cream is added, boiling can cause it to separate and turn grainy, so the bisque should be warmed slowly until hot.

“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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