Skip to main content
Main

Salt-fish Chowder

A chowder made with salt fish, potatoes, onion, cracker, water, milk, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salt-fish Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Assemble and cook

  1. Layer the salt fish, onion, potatoes, and crushed cracker in a buttered baking dish.

  2. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  3. Pour hot water over the layers and boil gently for 20 minutes.

  4. Add hot milk and cream, then bring to a boil.

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

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish
Provides the main savoury, salty flavour that defines the chowder.
Raw potatoes
Starch that softens during simmering and helps thicken the chowder.
White onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens in the liquid.
Cracker
Crushed crumbs absorb liquid and help thicken the broth.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the liquid base.

The step that matters

Boiling gently after adding the hot water. A gentle simmer cooks the potatoes through without breaking them apart. A hard boil can break down the starch and make the chowder cloudy or ragged. Adding the milk and cream later and bringing it to a boil only briefly keeps the dairy from curdling or scorching.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, potato, pepper, milk, cream):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, potato, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes