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Clam Chowder

A soup of clams, potatoes, salt pork, crackers, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,668 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Clam Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, fry the salt pork slowly until crisp.

  2. Layer the clams and sliced potatoes in the saucepan with the white pepper.

  3. Add the clam liquor and enough water to cover the potatoes.

  4. Cook until the potatoes are tender.

  5. Stir in the broken crackers and let it boil for a moment.

  6. Add the cream and season with coarse sea salt if necessary, then serve.

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. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Pork + clamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Clam + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  4. Pork + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Cream + potatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Boston crackers
Break down slightly into the broth, thickening it and adding body.
Salt pork
Renders fat that carries flavour and gives savoury depth to the base.
Potatoes
Soften during cooking and add starch and body to the chowder.
Clams
Provide the main seafood flavour, with their liquor adding briny taste.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished chowder.

The step that matters

Stir in the broken crackers and let it boil for a moment. Crackers thicken the liquid as their starch swells, but they can turn gluey or dissolve into sludge if boiled too long, so stir them in only at the end.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, cream, clam, potato):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, cream, clam, potato. 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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