Name: Chowder of Fish or Clams
Ingredients: pork, sliced; 2-3 onions, sliced; fish, skinned and cut into pieces; coarse sea salt; red or black pepper; potatoes, peeled and sliced; boiling water; 2 tablespoons flour; ½ cup cream

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 ↓

Chowder of Fish or Clams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

In a pot, cook the sliced pork until the fat is rendered.
Add the sliced onions and brown them, then remove everything except the liquid.
Season the fish pieces with salt and pepper.

Simmer and thicken

Add the sliced potatoes and enough boiling water to cover them.
Cook for about 30 minutes, or until the potatoes and fish are done.
Thicken the chowder with 2 tablespoons of flour mixed in ½ cup of cream.

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.

Onion + potatotop 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).
Pepper + potatotop 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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Starch that softens during simmering and gives the chowder body and bulk.
Flour: Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat, giving the chowder a fuller texture.
Cream: Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the thickened broth.
Pork: Rendered fat carries flavor into the pot and enriches the broth.
Onions: Browning adds sweetness and savory depth to the base.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour mixed into cream. Flour clumps if added dry or to hot liquid without being blended smoothly first. Mixing it into the cream before adding lets the starch disperse evenly so the chowder thickens smoothly rather than lumpy.

Swap the onion

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

Spinachfits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well
Asparagusfits about as well
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, fish, pepper, potato, flour, cream. 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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Chowder of Fish or Clams