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Potato Chowder

A creamy potato and onion chowder made with butter, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Potato Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Slice the potatoes and onion into ¼ inch thick pieces.

  2. Boil the potatoes and onion in 1 cup of water until tender.

Make and combine

  1. In a separate pot, make a white sauce by combining milk, butter, and flour.

  2. Add the white sauce to the cooked potatoes and onion, being careful not to break the potatoes.

Serve

  1. Serve with croutons or crackers, adding the crackers to the tureen 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Potatoes
Form the body of the chowder and thicken it as their starch releases during cooking.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the chowder and the white sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the white sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a white sauce by gelatinising its starch.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the boiling water.

The step that matters

Adding the white sauce to the potatoes. Stirring too vigorously or too long breaks the potato pieces apart and makes the chowder mushy. Folding gently keeps the slices whole while the sauce coats them evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, milk, flour, 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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