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Clam Chowder

A creamy soup made with potatoes, celery, carrots, onion, turnip, clams, bacon, and tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Clam Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Peel and wash the potatoes, then dice them.

  2. In a large pot, combine the potatoes, celery, carrots, onion, turnip, salt, and pepper.

  3. Add 8 cups of water and boil slowly until the potatoes are nearly done.

Make the base

  1. In a separate saucepan, stew the tomatoes for 10 minutes, then mash through a sieve and add to the vegetables.

  2. Stir in 1 tablespoon of butter.

  3. Fry the chopped bacon in a pan, then add 1 tablespoon of flour to the bacon grease and mix well.

  4. Add the flour mixture to the broth.

  5. Add the quartered clams and their liquor, then boil for about 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, add a few broken crackers and season with salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starch that softens during boiling and thickens the chowder body.
Bacon
Renders fat that carries flavour and forms the base for the flour roux.
Flour
Thickens the broth when cooked in bacon grease into a roux.
Clams
Main seafood that gives the chowder its distinctive flavour.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and colour to the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished chowder.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the broth. Flour clumps if added raw or dumped in at once. Cooking it in bacon fat first and stirring it into the hot broth gradually helps it disperse and thicken smoothly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, celery, carrot, onion, turnip, pepper, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, celery, carrot, onion, turnip, pepper, 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.

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