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Clam Chowder

A soup made with clams, potatoes, onions, milk, butter, salt pork, and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Clam Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chowder

  1. Place the salt pork in the bottom of a soup kettle and cook until the fat is rendered.

  2. Add boiling water, sliced potatoes, sliced onion, and chopped clams to the kettle.

  3. Boil for 25 minutes, then season with salt and pepper.

  4. Add scalded milk and butter to the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Break the crackers in half and place them on top of the chowder.

  2. When the crackers are soft, the chowder is ready to serve.

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. Clam + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  5. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Renders fat that carries flavour into the broth as the base of the chowder.
Potatoes
Soften during boiling and thicken the chowder body with their starch.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished chowder.
Crackers
Soak up broth and soften on top, adding body to the chowder.

The step that matters

Adding the scalded milk. Hot milk added to a boiling chowder can curdle or scorch, so it should be scalded first and added while the mixture is kept at a gentle heat.

Swap the onion

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

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

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