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Fish Chowder

A hearty stew of potatoes, onions, fish, pork, and sea biscuits simmered in water and claret.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fish Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork and onions

  1. Fry one-third of the salt pork with one-third of the onions in a kettle.

  2. Remove the fried pork and onions and set aside.

Layer the chowder

  1. Wash and dry the kettle, then layer raw salt pork on the bottom.

  2. Add a layer of fish, season with black and red pepper, salt, and ground cloves.

  3. Layer potatoes, onions, fried pork, and half the sea biscuits, seasoning each layer.

  4. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used, seasoning as directed.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour cold water into the kettle until it covers the ingredients, cover, and boil slowly until potatoes are cooked.

  2. Add 1 quart of claret, bring to just boiling, remove thyme, and serve in a tureen.

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. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Potato + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 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

Salt pork
Renders fat as it cooks, flavouring the broth and the layers.
Potatoes
Break down slowly in the broth, thickening it and giving the chowder body.
Porgies
Flake into the broth as they cook, adding the main fish flavour.
Sea biscuits
Soaked hard biscuit that softens and thickens the broth as it simmers.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour when stirred in near the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Pour in the cold water and boil slowly. Covering the ingredients with cold water and simmering gently lets starches and fat release slowly into the broth. Boiling hard can break up the fish and cloud the liquid.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, biscuit, pork, pepper, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, biscuit, pork, pepper, 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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