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Tomato Chowder

A tomato chowder made with tomatoes, onions, salt pork, rice, flour, and water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tomato Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the salt pork in a pot until light brown.

  2. Add the sliced onions and cook until they are light straw color.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for 3 minutes.

  4. Add the boiling water, rice, and tomatoes to the pot.

  5. Simmer for 1 hour.

  6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Renders fat for frying the onions and adds savory flavor to the base.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet as they cook, building the body of the chowder.
Flour
Cooked briefly with the fat and onions to thicken the chowder slightly.
Rice
Releases starch during the long simmer, helping to thicken the chowder.
Tomatoes
Provide the main flavor, acidity and liquid for the chowder.

The step that matters

Cooking the onions to light straw color. Onions cooked too briefly stay sharp and raw-tasting, while cooking them too far turns them bitter and brown. Gentle browning builds sweetness that balances the tomato acidity.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pork, rice, flour, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pork, rice, flour, 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.

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