Name: Fish Chowder
Ingredients: Fresh cod or haddock, cut into 2-inch pieces; Salt pork, sliced; Split crackers; Peeled potatoes, thickly sliced; Chopped onion; Pepper; Water; Flour; Catsup

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 Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the salt pork slices in an iron pot until crisp, then remove and chop finely, leaving the fat in the pot.
Layer the fish pieces in the pot with a layer of split crackers, chopped pork, potato slices, onion, and pepper.
Repeat the layers with the remaining ingredients.
Cover with boiling water and cook for 30 minutes.
Skim the chowder into a serving dish.
Thicken the gravy with flour, add a little catsup, boil, and pour over the chowder.
Remove the bones if convenient when 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.

Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,668 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

Swap the onion

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

Chivefits better
Capsicumfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, pork, potato, pepper, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.