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Fish Chowder

A stew of fish, potatoes, and pork with biscuits, seasoned with herbs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

  1. Wash and dry the fish, then cut it into small pieces.

Cook

  1. In a stewpan, layer the fish, potatoes, and pork, sprinkling each layer with onion, herbs, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add the water, cover tightly, and cook gently for 40 minutes.

  3. Soak the biscuits in the milk, beat out lumps with a fork, and stir into the stew 10 minutes before serving.

  4. Adjust seasoning to taste and serve hot.

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 + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Cod, haddock, or whiting
Forms the flaky body of the chowder as it cooks gently.
Potatoes
Soften during gentle cooking and thicken the broth with their starch.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savoury flavour that seasons the whole chowder.
Water biscuits
Soaked in milk and stirred in, they thicken and enrich the stew.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the broth.

The step that matters

Soak the biscuits in the milk, then stir in at the end. Biscuits left as dry lumps stay pasty; soaking and beating them smooth lets them dissolve evenly into the liquid, thickening it without graininess. Adding them 10 minutes before serving keeps the milk from overcooking and curdling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, potato, pork, biscuit, milk, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, potato, pork, biscuit, milk, pepper. 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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