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Corn Chowder

A creamy chowder made with sweet corn, potatoes, milk, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Corn Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut each row of kernels and scrape the raw corn from the cob.

  2. Boil the cobs in water for 20 minutes.

  3. Pare and dice the potatoes.

  4. Pour boiling water over the diced potatoes.

  5. Drain the potatoes and let them stand.

  6. Remove the cobs.

Make the chowder

  1. Add the potatoes, salt, and pepper to the pot.

  2. When the potatoes are nearly done, add the corn and milk.

  3. Cook the mixture for 20 minutes.

Thicken and finish

  1. Cook the flour in the hot butter.

  2. Add 1 cup of the corn liquid to the flour mixture.

  3. Stir until the mixture thickens.

  4. Stir the thickened mixture into the chowder.

  5. Chop the egg whites finely.

  6. Strain the yolk.

  7. Add the yolk to the chowder.

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. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Mango + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together471 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Milk + buttertop 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

Flour
Thickens the chowder when cooked in butter and stirred into the liquid.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness and fat to the chowder.
Potatoes
Add body and starch, softening into the chowder as it cooks.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the chowder base.
Sweet corn
Provides the main sweetness, texture and corn flavour of the chowder.

The step that matters

Cook the flour in the hot butter. Cooking flour in fat before adding liquid coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly. Without this, the thickener forms lumps and the chowder will not thicken smoothly.

Swap the mango

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, flour, potato, milk, pepper, egg, butter):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Mangothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, flour, potato, milk, pepper, egg, butter. 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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