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Seafood açorda with shrimp and clams.
Seafood

Açorda de Marisco (Seafood Bread Stew with Shrimp and Clams)

Leonor Perreira · Updated Nov 12, 2026
Prep
10 min
Total
25 min
Servings
4
Calories
520 kcal
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Açorda de marisco is comfort food from the Portuguese coast: bread soaked in seafood broth with cilantro and garlic, bound at the end with raw egg. It tastes of the sea.

Açorda was born as a way to use up stale bread, soaked in broth rather than thrown away. In the seafood version, from the coasts of the Alentejo and the Algarve, the broth the shellfish cooked in turns a humble dish into a rich meal.

Recipe

Açorda de Marisco

Shrimp and clams with Alentejo bread, garlic and cilantro, bound with egg into a creamy stew. A traditional Portuguese dish that tastes of the sea.

Ingredients

4 servings

Method

  1. 1
    Bring a pot with about 1 liter of water to a boil. Add the clams. When they open, take them out. In the same broth, cook the shrimp quickly (about 2 minutes). Take out the shrimp and set aside. Strain the broth.
  2. 2
    Take the clams out of their shells, keeping a few in the shell to garnish.
  3. 3
    Put the stale bread in a bowl and pour some of the hot seafood broth over it to soften it.
  4. 4
    In a wide pot, put a generous layer of olive oil and the chopped garlic. Let the garlic turn lightly golden over low heat.
  5. 5
    Add the soaked bread (squeeze it lightly if there's too much water). Stir hard with a wooden spoon until the bread breaks down and turns creamy (add more broth if needed).
  6. 6
    When the açorda is hot and smooth, season with salt and pepper and add the shrimp, the shelled clams and most of the chopped cilantro. Fold in well.
  7. 7
    Take it off the heat. Crack the two eggs over the açorda and stir straight away and very fast so the eggs cook in the remaining heat, making the açorda even creamier.
  8. 8
    Serve at once, garnished with the clams in their shells and sprinkled with the rest of the cilantro.
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Tips

Use bread one or two days old. Fresh bread breaks down too fast and the açorda turns pasty.

Stir hard as soon as you add the raw eggs, off the heat, so they cook only in the warmth of the pot and thicken the açorda without curdling.

For more seafood, add mussels, cockles or langoustines, cooked quickly in the broth first.

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