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Soup

Corn Chowder

A soup made with onion, ham, corn, potato, water, butter, flour, milk, salt, Tabasco sauce, and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato 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 ↓

Corn Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Sauté the sliced onion with the diced ham in a pot.

  2. Add the corn, diced potato, and boiling water. Cook for 30 minutes.

Make the milk mixture

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add the hot milk to the roux, stirring until smooth.

  3. Add the milk mixture to the pot and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the salt, Tabasco sauce, and rolled crackers before serving.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  5. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Potato
Breaks down partly as it cooks, adding body and thickening the chowder.
Flour
Thickens the milk with the butter, giving the chowder a smooth, creamy body.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that gives the chowder its richness and mild sweetness.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and aroma from the start of the cooking.
Crackers
Soak up liquid and further thicken the chowder as they are stirred in.

The step that matters

Gradually add the hot milk to the roux, stirring until smooth. Adding milk slowly while stirring lets the flour disperse evenly in the fat and liquid. Dumping it in at once makes lumps that are hard to smooth out later, and the starch only thickens properly when it is evenly distributed.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, corn, potato, butter, flour, milk, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, corn, potato, butter, flour, milk, sauce. 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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