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Fish Chowder

A fish chowder made with cod or haddock, salt pork, onion, potatoes, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fish Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Fry the salt pork with the chopped onion until brown.

  2. In a kettle, combine the fried pork and onion with the fish and cover with boiling water.

  3. Add a little coarse sea salt and cook until the fish is tender.

Finish the chowder

  1. Add the cooked sliced potatoes to the chowder along with the milk.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour, and gradually add 1 cup of the hot liquid to make a sauce.

  3. Stir the sauce into the chowder and season with pepper and salt to taste.

  4. Top with a few crackers before serving.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Renders fat and browns, adding savory flavor to the chowder base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with the flour forms the thickening sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a sauce that gives the chowder body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and moisture, softening the chowder's texture.
Potatoes
Add starch and bulk, making the chowder heartier and slightly thicker.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour sauce into the chowder. Flour thickens best when it is cooked in fat and whisked into hot liquid gradually, which prevents lumps. Adding it all at once or to cold liquid can leave clumps that do not smooth out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, pork, potato, milk, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, pork, potato, milk, butter, flour, 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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