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Congress Chowder

A chowder made with salt pork, fish, crackers, potatoes, onions, milk, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Congress Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the salt pork in a large kettle until crispy.

Layer and cook

  1. Layer the fish, soaked crackers, potatoes, and onions in the kettle.

  2. Continue layering until the kettle is full.

  3. Pour in the milk and season with cayenne pepper.

  4. Cook over a fire until heated through.

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  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

Salt pork
Fried first to render fat and add savory, salty flavor to the chowder.
Rock cod or other fish
Provides the main protein, cooking into tender flakes in the milk.
Crackers
Soaked crackers soften and thicken the broth, giving the chowder body.
Potatoes
Starch that softens during cooking and helps thicken the chowder.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that carries the other ingredients.

The step that matters

Cook over a fire until heated through. Milk scorches and can curdle if it boils hard or sits over direct heat too long, so heat gently and stir the bottom to keep the chowder smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

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