Skip to main content
Drink

Corn Chowder

A creamy soup made with corn, potatoes, onions, bacon, milk, butter, and served hot with toasted crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Corn Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chowder

  1. Fry the minced onion in the bacon fat until soft.

  2. Strain the onion and place it in a stewpan.

  3. Add the diced potatoes and 1 cup of boiling water; cook until the potatoes are almost tender.

  4. Stir in the corn, salt, pepper, heated milk, and butter.

Serve

  1. Split and toast the crackers.

  2. Serve the chowder very hot with the toasted crackers, sprinkling minced parsley 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 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

Potatoes
Provide body and starch that thicken the chowder as they soften.
Milk
Adds creamy richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the broth.
Corn
Adds sweetness and tender kernels that give the chowder its main flavor.
Onion
Builds savory aromatic flavor when softened in bacon fat.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and a round, buttery flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the potatoes until almost tender. Potatoes release starch as they cook, which thickens the liquid. Stopping at almost tender leaves them intact and lets them finish softening gently once the milk goes in, rather than turning mushy or breaking down.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, pepper, potato, butter, parsley, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, pepper, potato, butter, parsley, milk. 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 corn chowder recipes

Chicken 3 See all 74 →

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes