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Corn Chowder

A hearty corn chowder with potatoes, salt pork, crackers, butter, and beef extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Corn Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Cut the salt pork into pieces and fry until crispy.

  2. Add chopped onion and cook for 5 minutes, stirring to prevent burning.

  3. Strain the fat into a stew pan.

  4. Parboil the potatoes in boiling water for 5 minutes, then drain.

  5. Add the potatoes to the fat and pour in 2 cups of boiling water.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook until the potatoes are soft.

  2. Add corn and milk, then heat to boiling point.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Add beef extract, butter, and crackers soaked in enough milk to moisten.

  5. Remove the crackers.

  6. Pour the chowder into a tureen.

  7. Place the crackers on top.

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 + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Potato + corntop 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 + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the body of the chowder and thicken it as their starch releases during cooking.
Common crackers
Soak up milk and dissolve into the broth, adding body and thickening the chowder.
Salt pork
Renders fat that carries flavour through the whole chowder.
Corn
Adds sweetness and a tender bite to the chowder.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the broth.

The step that matters

Heating the milk to boiling point. Milk can scorch or curdle if it boils hard or sits on the bottom of the pot. Heat it gently and stir so the chowder stays smooth and creamy.

“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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