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Fish Chowdek

A soup made with salt pork, fish, potatoes, onions, and a flour‑milk thickener.

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 ↓

Fish Chowdek

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a pot, fry the salt pork slices until brown.

Make the chowder

  1. Layer fish, potatoes, and onions in the pot, seasoning with salt and pepper as desired.

  2. Continue layering until all ingredients are used.

  3. Pour enough water to cover the layers and boil for 20 minutes.

  4. Mix flour with milk and add to the pot to thicken the chowder.

Serve

  1. Line the bottom and sides of a tureen with pilot bread, slices of bread, or crackers.

  2. Serve the chowder 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. 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. 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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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

Salt pork
Fried until brown, it adds a savory, smoky fat and flavor to the pot.
Potatoes
Sliced potatoes soften as they boil, adding body and starch to the chowder.
Flour
Mixed with milk and stirred in, flour thickens the broth into a creamy consistency.
Milk
Combined with flour, milk adds richness and creaminess to the thickened chowder.

The step that matters

Mixing flour with milk before adding. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps; mixing it with milk first lets it disperse evenly so the chowder thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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