Skip to main content
Main

Fresh Haddock Chowder

A chowder made with haddock, salt pork, soaked crackers, onion, pepper, and salt, cooked in water and optionally thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pork and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fresh Haddock Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the diced salt pork in a kettle until brown, then remove and set aside. Leave the fat in the kettle.

Layer and cook

  1. Layer the fish, soaked crackers, chopped pork, onion, pepper, and salt.

  2. Repeat the layers.

  3. Cover with water and cook for 30 minutes.

  4. If the chowder is too thin, thicken it with flour.

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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Haddock + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together401 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Haddock
Forms the main body of the chowder as it cooks into tender flakes.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the kettle that carries flavor through the whole chowder.
Crackers
Soak up liquid and help thicken the chowder as they break down.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens during cooking.
Flour
Thickens the broth when the chowder is too thin.

The step that matters

Cover with water and cook for 30 minutes. Too much water dilutes the broth and too little can scorch the layers on the kettle floor. Keep the liquid level just covering the layers so the fish cooks gently and the chowder stays rich.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesBoiled HaddockBoiled Haddock10 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes