Name: Clam Chowder a LA Thayer
Ingredients: ½ pound fat salt pork; 50 large hard clams, chopped; ½ can tomatoes, chopped; 1 handful celery, chopped; 1 handful parsley, chopped; 1 quart onions, chopped; 6 pilot biscuits, crushed; a little thyme; 2 quarts potatoes, cut into 1-inch pieces

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Clam Chowder a LA Thayer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

Fry the fat salt pork slowly in a saucepan, then remove it from the heat and let it cool.
In the same saucepan, add the chopped onions and cook until softened.

Cook the chowder

Add the chopped clams, tomatoes, celery, parsley, crushed biscuits, thyme, and potatoes.
Stir well and cook until the potatoes are tender.
Serve 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.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,193 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,370 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Fat salt pork: Renders fat into the pan, giving the chowder a savory, rich base flavor.
Onions: Softened in the rendered fat, they add sweetness and aromatic depth to the base.
Potatoes: Cook until tender, becoming soft pieces that thicken the chowder and add body.
Pilot biscuits: Crushed biscuits absorb liquid and help thicken the chowder.
Hard clams: Provide the main seafood flavor and chewy texture in the chowder.

The step that matters

Frying the salt pork slowly. Cooking the pork over gentle heat renders its fat gradually without scorching the meat. That rendered fat then carries the flavor of the onions and the rest of the chowder.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, clam, celery, parsley, onion, biscuit, thyme):

Potatofits better
Carrotfits better
Shallotfits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, clam, celery, parsley, onion, biscuit, thyme. 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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Clam Chowder a LA Thayer