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Potato Chowder

A hearty soup of diced potatoes, salt pork, onion, butter, flour, milk, water, and parsley, simmered and thickened with a roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Mary Ronald · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Cut the potatoes into dice, cut the salt pork into small pieces, and put it with the sliced onion into a frying pan, and fry until a light brown.

Simmer

  1. Put into a kettle a layer of potatoes, then a layer of onions and pork, and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and chopped parsley. Repeat this until all the potatoes, pork, onions, and parsley are in. Pour over them the grease from the pan in which the pork and onions were fried. Add one pint of water, cover, and let simmer twenty minutes.

Add the milk and finish

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler, and add it to a roux made of the flour and butter. Add this to the pot when the potatoes are tender, and stir carefully together, so as not to break the potatoes.

  2. Taste to see if the seasoning is right. Serve very hot.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

918Calories
27 gProtein
21 gFat
156 gCarbs

Counts 8 of 9 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Potato1 medium (173g) baked161
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Mary Ronald. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 and thicken it as their starch softens during simmering.
Milk
Adds creamy richness and a mild sweetness that rounds out the savory pork and onion.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, body-giving roux with the butter.
Butter
Enriches the roux with fat, adding flavor and smoothing the texture.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the pan that flavors the whole chowder with savory, smoky depth.
Onion
Softens and sweetens during frying, adding aromatic flavor to the base.

The step that matters

Stirring in the milk mixture gently. Potatoes that have cooked until tender break apart easily when stirred hard. Gentle folding keeps the pieces whole and the chowder pleasantly textured rather than mushy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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