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Clam Chowder

A creamy soup made with clams, salt pork, potatoes, onions, milk, and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion 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 ↓

Clam Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and prepare the clams, reserving the clam liquor.

  2. In a large pot, cook the salt pork until browned.

Make the chowder

  1. Add the sliced potatoes and chopped onion to the pot.

  2. Pour in the clam liquor and enough water to cover the ingredients.

  3. Simmer until the potatoes are tender.

  4. Stir in the clams, milk, salt, and pepper.

  5. Cook for a few more minutes until heated through.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, topped with broken 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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Clam + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  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

Clams
Provide the main seafood flavor and chewy texture in the chowder.
Salt pork
Renders fat that browns and adds savory, rich flavor to the base.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering to thicken the chowder and give it body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the broth.
Clam liquor
Carries concentrated clam flavor into the broth.
Broken crackers
Add a crisp, salty topping and some thickening when stirred in.

The step that matters

Simmer until the potatoes are tender. Simmering gently softens the potato starch so it thickens the broth. Boiling hard can break potatoes apart and make the chowder cloudy, and the milk added later can curdle if it boils.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, pork, potato, pepper, milk. 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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