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Corn Chowder

A hearty soup made with corn, potatoes, onions, salt pork, and milk.

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 ↓

Corn Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil corn cobs in enough water to cover for 15 minutes, then remove cobs.

  2. Wash, peel, and parboil potatoes for 5 minutes.

  3. In an omelet pan, melt diced salt pork, then add onions and fry until light brown.

  4. Pour the fat into the corn water, pressing out the onion juice, and discard the onions.

Make the chowder

  1. Add potatoes, corn, salt, and pepper to the pot, cover with boiling water, and cook for at least 20 minutes.

  2. Melt butter, stir in flour, and boil for 1 minute before adding to the chowder.

  3. Cook the chowder for an additional 5 minutes, then stir in hot milk and serve very hot with toasted crackers.

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. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

Green corn
Provides the main sweet flavor and body of the chowder.
Potatoes
Soften during cooking and thicken the chowder while adding starchy body.
Salt pork
Renders fat that carries flavor through the whole chowder.
Onions
Fried until light brown to add savory, slightly sweet aroma to the fat.
All-purpose flour
Cooked in butter first, then thickens the liquid as a roux.
Milk
Added at the end to enrich the chowder and soften its flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter before adding it. Boiling the butter and flour for a minute cooks out raw starch taste and lets the mixture thicken the chowder smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

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