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Corn Chowder

A hearty soup made with corn, potatoes, onions, bacon or ham, water crackers, milk, butter, flour, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Corn Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and dice the potatoes and onions.

  2. Cut the bacon or ham into small pieces.

  3. Fry the bacon or ham pieces with the onions until browned.

  4. In a saucepan, layer the potatoes, bacon, onions, corn, salt, and pepper, repeating until all ingredients are used, finishing with corn on top.

Make the chowder

  1. Add the boiling water.

  2. Simmer over moderate heat for 20 minutes.

  3. Stir in the milk.

  4. Rub the butter and flour together.

  5. Stir the butter-flour mixture into the boiling chowder.

  6. Add the broken water crackers.

  7. Stir and cook for 5 minutes.

  8. Taste and adjust seasoning.

  9. Remove from heat.

  10. Stir in the beaten egg yolk before serving.

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. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  5. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Combined with butter, it thickens the chowder as it cooks.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the chowder.
Potatoes
Provide starch and bulk, softening as they simmer to give the chowder body.
Corn
Supplies the main sweet flavour and texture of the chowder.
Egg yolk
Enriches the chowder and adds richness when stirred in off the heat.
Bacon or ham
Adds savoury, smoky flavour and fat from browning with the onions.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens and enriches when gently warmed, but can curdle or scramble if it meets boiling liquid. Removing the pan from heat first keeps the chowder smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, flour, potato, milk, ham, egg, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, flour, potato, milk, ham, egg, butter. 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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