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Clam Chowder

A hearty soup of clams, potatoes, onions, and tomatoes simmered with pork fat and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Clam Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Fry the fat salt pork until all the fat is extracted.

  2. Add the diced onion and fry until light yellow.

  3. Boil the tomatoes in a pot.

  4. Strain the pork fat into the boiling tomatoes.

Simmer the chowder

  1. Add the clam liquor, cold water, and cubed potatoes.

  2. Tie the cloves and allspice in a bag and drop it into the soup.

  3. Cook for 2 hours.

  4. Half an hour before it's done, add the chopped clams.

  5. Stir in Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with 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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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
Its rendered fat carries the flavor of the soup base.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and liquid that form the body of the chowder.
Potatoes
Soften during the long simmer and thicken the chowder slightly.
Clams
Supply the main seafood flavor; added late so they do not toughen.
Onion
Sweetens and builds aromatic depth when fried gently in the fat.

The step that matters

Adding the chopped clams. Clams become tough and rubbery when overcooked, so they go in only half an hour before the end of the 2-hour simmer.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, tomato, clam, potato, clove, sauce):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, tomato, clam, potato, clove, sauce. 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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