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Fish Chowder

A hearty chowder made with salt pork, fish, potatoes, onions, herbs, crackers, and simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 241 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fish Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the layers

  1. Soak the salt pork in hot water for 5 minutes.

  2. Layer the pork in the bottom of a large pot.

Build the pot

  1. Add a layer of fish to cover the pork.

  2. Follow with a layer of sliced potatoes, then chopped onion, parsley, herbs, salt, and pepper.

  3. Add a layer of broken crackers.

  4. Repeat the layers until all fish is used, finishing with crackers on top.

  5. Pour enough water over the layers to cover them.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the pot and place it in a large kettle of boiling water.

  2. Simmer slowly for 3 hours, or less if fish and potatoes are already cooked.

  3. Serve with slices of lemon.

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. Parsley + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Summer savory + biscuittop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Renders fat and flavour into the broth as it cooks slowly.
Sea bass or cod
Forms the main body of the chowder, flaking into tender pieces as it simmers.
Potatoes
Add starch that thickens the broth and gives the chowder body.
Boston crackers or pilot biscuits
Soak up liquid and help thicken the chowder as they break down.

The step that matters

Simmering time. Simmering slowly rather than boiling keeps the fish from breaking apart and toughening. Checking that the fish and potatoes are cooked prevents underdone or overcooked layers.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, potato, parsley, summer savory, pepper, biscuit):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, potato, parsley, summer savory, pepper, biscuit. 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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