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Philadelphia Clam Chowder

A thick soup of clams, potatoes, onions, and salt pork, seasoned with sugar, marjoram, savory, cloves, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 125 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Philadelphia Clam Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine onions, water, and salt pork in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes.

Add vegetables and seasonings

  1. Add potatoes, sugar, salt, marjoram, savory, cloves, and red pepper.

  2. Cook until potatoes are done.

Thicken and serve

  1. Soak sea-biscuit in cold water for 5 minutes.

  2. Add sea-biscuit to the chowder.

  3. Serve hot with a plate of crackers.

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. Marjoram + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Summer savory + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 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 that carries flavor through the broth.
Potatoes
Soften as they cook and give the chowder body and substance.
Sea-biscuit
Absorbs liquid and thickens the chowder as it softens.
Onions
Build a sweet, savory base flavor as they simmer in the water.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the salt and savory herbs.

The step that matters

Soaking the sea-biscuit before adding it. Dry biscuit added straight to hot liquid can clump and stay chalky. Soaking hydrates the starch first, so it dissolves into the broth and thickens it evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, potato, sugar, marjoram, summer savory, clove, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, potato, sugar, marjoram, summer savory, clove, 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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