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Fish Chowder

A hearty stew of pork, vegetables, and fish thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fish Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Fry the pork slices until crisp in a granite pot.

  2. Layer the onions, potatoes, apple, tomatoes, cloves, allspice, bay leaves, lemon slices, parsley, chili pepper, salt, and black pepper in the pot.

  3. Pour in enough cold water to cover the ingredients and stew gently for 1 hour.

Cook and finish

  1. Add the fish pieces to the pot, cover, and cook slowly for about 30 minutes until the chowder is thoroughly done.

  2. Thicken the chowder with flour and butter rubbed together if desired.

  3. Serve with sliced lemon, chopped hard-boiled eggs, and pickles.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fat pork
Renders fat as it crisps, adding savory flavor to the broth base.
Onions
Soften during stewing and build sweetness and body in the broth.
Irish potatoes
Break down slightly as they stew, giving the chowder body and thickness.
Fish
Cooks gently in the broth to become tender and flake into the chowder.
Flour and butter
Together thicken the broth, giving it a fuller, smoother body.

The step that matters

Adding the fish and cooking it through. Fish cooks quickly and becomes dry or tough if overcooked, so it should be added after the vegetables are tender and cooked just until it flakes.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, potato, tomato, clove, allspice, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, potato, tomato, clove, allspice, lemon. 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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