Skip to main content
Main

Potato Chowder

A creamy potato chowder with salt pork, onions, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and onion 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 ↓

Potato Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the salt pork and chopped onion together until both are a delicate brown.

Make the chowder

  1. In a kettle, layer the sliced potatoes, then a layer of onions and pork, sprinkling with salt between layers.

  2. Pour the grease from the pan over the layers and add the water.

  3. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender.

  4. Thicken the milk with the flour mixed with the butter and pour it over the potatoes.

  5. Stir carefully to avoid breaking the potatoes.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot.

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

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

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

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

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the body of the chowder, becoming tender as they simmer and giving bulk to the dish.
Salt pork
Renders fat that flavours the broth and adds savoury depth.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that the flour thickens into a rich base.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the chowder becomes creamy rather than thin.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and smooths the thickened milk.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with the flour mixed with the butter and pour it over the potatoes.. Mixing flour with fat before adding liquid helps prevent lumps, because the starch granules coat evenly and disperse instead of clumping when hydrated.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes