Skip to main content
Main

Corn Chowder

A creamy corn chowder with potatoes, onions, and crackers, simmered in milk and seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and shortening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the base

  1. Brown the onion in hot shortening, stirring to prevent burning.

  2. Boil the potatoes in a small amount of water until tender.

  3. Add the cooked potatoes to the onion with 2 cups of potato water or boiling water.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the heated milk and corn, and bring to a boil.

  2. Add salt, pepper, butter, and crackers moistened in cold milk.

  3. 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.

  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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Potato + milktop 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

Potatoes
Soften and thicken the broth, giving the chowder body as they break down.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a soft, rich body to the chowder.
Crackers
Moistened in milk, they thicken the chowder and add a little body.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour to the finished chowder.
Onion
Browning in fat builds a sweeter, deeper savoury base.

The step that matters

Stir in the heated milk and corn, and bring to a boil. Milk can scorch or curdle if it boils hard for too long, so keep the heat controlled once the milk is added and watch the pot closely.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

More corn chowder recipes

Chicken 3 See all 74 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes