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Fish Chowder

A hearty soup of fish, potatoes, and salt pork simmered with butter and milk.

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

Fish Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Fry the salt pork in a deep kettle until brown.

Layer and cook

  1. Layer the fish in the kettle on top of the pork, starting with the head parts.

  2. Add a layer of thinly sliced potatoes, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  3. Continue layering fish and potatoes, seasoning each layer, until the kettle is full.

  4. If desired, add chopped onions with the potatoes.

  5. Cover with boiling water and bring to a quick boil.

  6. Once boiling, reduce heat to maintain a steady, slow boil.

Finish the chowder

  1. When the potatoes are cooked, pour in the milk and let it boil once more.

  2. Just before serving, add the butter.

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. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Renders fat that browns the kettle base and adds savory flavor to the chowder.
Potatoes
Soften as they cook and thicken the broth with their starch, giving body to the chowder.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, rounding out the broth at the end of cooking.
Butter
Added at the end, it adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished chowder.

The step that matters

Adding the milk after the potatoes are cooked. Milk can scorch or curdle if boiled hard for long, so it should go in once the potatoes are tender and be brought just to a boil again rather than simmered for a long time.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, fish, potato, pepper, butter, egg, milk):

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

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

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