Skip to main content
Main

Corn Chowder

A hearty soup made with corn, potatoes, onions, bacon, milk, butter, and served 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

Prepare the base

  1. Fry the minced onion in the bacon fat.

  2. Strain the onion.

  3. Place the strained onion in a stewpan.

  4. Add the potatoes and 1 cup of boiling water.

  5. Cook until almost tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Add corn, salt, pepper, heated milk, and butter.

  2. Split the crackers and toast the crackers.

  3. Serve very hot with the crackers.

  4. Sprinkle finely minced parsley over the 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 starch and body that thickens the chowder as it cooks.
Milk
Adds creamy richness and smooth body to the broth.
Butter
Adds fat for rich flavour and a silky mouthfeel.
Corn
Adds natural sweetness and a tender bite to the chowder.
Bacon
Its rendered fat carries flavour into the onion, adding savoury depth.

The step that matters

Cook until almost tender. Potatoes cook through gradually in simmering liquid; stopping at almost tender leaves them firm enough to hold shape, while overcooking breaks them down and turns the chowder gluey. Starch released from the potatoes is what gives the soup its body.

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

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes