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Dried Fish Chowder

A chowder made with dried fish, potatoes, milk, crackers, salt pork, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Dried Fish Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over and shred the fish, soaking it in lukewarm water while preparing other ingredients.

Make the chowder

  1. Cut the salt pork into small pieces and fry it with the onion until both are a delicate brown.

  2. Add the potatoes, cover with water, and cook until the potatoes are soft.

  3. Stir in the milk and fish, then reheat the mixture.

  4. Soak the crackers in the milk while the potatoes cook, then add them to the chowder just 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. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish
Provides the main savoury flavour and substance of the chowder.
Potatoes
Soften during cooking and thicken the chowder while adding body.
Skimmed milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that carries the other ingredients.
Crackers
Soak up liquid and help thicken the chowder slightly.
Salt pork
Fried until brown to add rendered fat and savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the salt pork and onion. Browning the salt pork and onion slowly builds savoury flavour through caramelisation and rendered fat. Burning them gives a bitter taste that carries into the whole chowder.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, potato, milk, pork. 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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