Skip to main content
Main

Clam Chowder

A creamy soup of clams, potatoes, pork, onions, and ship‑bread, seasoned with mace and thyme.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Clam Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the clams for about 3 minutes, then strain and reserve the liquor.

  2. In a pot, fry the chopped onion and diced pork in butter until light in color.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook thoroughly.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add the clam liquor, stock or milk, cream, mace, thyme, and salt.

  2. Stir in the diced potatoes and cook until tender.

  3. Just before serving, add the diced clams and broken ship‑bread or 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pork + clamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Butter + clamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that carries flavor from the onion and pork and helps build the base.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a creamy chowder once cooked with the fat.
Potatoes
Add body and substance as they soften in the simmering liquid.
Pork
Adds savory, browned flavor from frying in butter.
Ship-bread or crackers
Absorb liquid and add body to thicken the chowder.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the fat. Flour must be cooked thoroughly with the butter and pork fat so it loses its raw starchy taste and thickens smoothly when liquid is added rather than clumping.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, pork, flour, clam, milk, cream):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, pork, flour, clam, milk, cream. 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.

More clam chowder recipes

Baked 5New England 5Coney Island 3Manhattan 3 See all 243 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes