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Potato Chowder

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Potato Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chowder

  1. Cook the sliced salt pork in a deep kettle until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Add the sliced onions and boiling water and let the mixture cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Add the sliced potatoes and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Cook until the potatoes and onions are soft.

Thicken and serve

  1. Blend the flour with the cold milk.

  2. Stir the mixture gently into the chowder and bring to a boil.

  3. Just before serving, add one pilot cracker or soda biscuit for each person.

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Soften as they cook and give the chowder body and bulk.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they simmer, adding savory depth to the broth.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the broth when thickened with flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the chowder becomes creamy rather than watery.
Salt pork
Renders fat and flavor into the kettle that carries through the whole chowder.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and milk mixture. Flour mixed with cold milk first disperses evenly; added directly to hot liquid it forms lumps. Stir gently and bring to a boil so the starch thickens fully.

Swap the onion

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

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

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