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Corn Chowder

A hearty soup made with salt pork, onions, potatoes, milk, corn, and buttered crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Make the chowder

  1. Boil the salt pork in 2 quarts of water with the sliced onions for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the cooked potatoes, hot milk, and corn, and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Cover the bottom of a soup tureen with buttered crackers.

  2. Pour the soup over the crackers and 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. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Pork + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,069 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  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

Salt pork
Renders fat and flavor into the water, seasoning the base of the soup.
Onions
Soften during boiling and add sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Potatoes
Break down partly into the broth, adding body and thickness to the chowder.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the chowder.
Corn
Adds sweetness and texture to the chowder.

The step that matters

Bringing the milk to a boil. Milk can scorch on the bottom of the pot and curdle or separate when it is boiled hard. Adding it hot and bringing the chowder just to a boil, without a hard rolling boil, helps keep it smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

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