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Fish Chowder

A layered fish chowder with cod or haddock, salt pork, potatoes, onions, and biscuits, simmered with thyme, parsley, milk, and optional flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fish Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the fish in cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Dry the fish and cut into 1-inch pieces.

  3. Cut the salt pork into 1-inch pieces.

  4. Fry the pork quickly in a pan until browned.

Layer the chowder

  1. Place the fried pork at the bottom of a pot.

  2. Layer the fish, lemon juice, salt, and white pepper over the pork.

  3. Add a layer of onions.

  4. Add a layer of sliced potatoes, seasoning each layer lightly with salt and pepper.

  5. Cover the final layer with Uneeda biscuits (or similar).

  6. In the frying pan, add 1 cup of hot water to the pork fat and boil the mixture.

  7. Pour the liquid over the chowder.

  8. Add enough boiling water to cover the ingredients, along with thyme and parsley.

Simmer and finish

  1. Cover the pot and simmer slowly for 1 hour.

  2. Add water as needed to keep covered.

  3. Stir in 1 cup of milk and boil for an additional 10 minutes.

  4. Avoid scorching the chowder after adding milk.

  5. If the chowder is too thin, thicken with 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with 2 tablespoons of milk.

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. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Potato + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Codfish or haddock
Forms the flaky body of the chowder as it cooks through.
Fat salt pork
Renders fat that carries flavour through the chowder and browns first for depth.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering and release starch that gives the broth body.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the broth.
Flour
Thickens the liquid if the chowder is too thin.

The step that matters

Stir in the milk and avoid scorching. Milk contains sugars and proteins that can scorch on the hot bottom of the pot. Keeping the heat gentle and stirring prevents a burnt taste and keeps the milk smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, pork, potato, onion, lemon, biscuit, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, pork, potato, onion, lemon, biscuit, thyme. 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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