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Fish Chowder

A hearty soup of fish, potatoes, pork, and biscuits simmered with herbs.

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 the chowder

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

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

  3. Soak the biscuits in the milk, then beat out lumps with a fork.

  4. Stir the biscuit mixture into the stew about 10 minutes before serving.

  5. Add 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

Water biscuits
Soaked in milk and stirred in, they thicken the chowder and give it a creamy body.
Potatoes
Break down slightly as they cook, adding body and starch that helps thicken the stew.
Cod, haddock, or whiting
Forms the main body of the chowder, cooking gently into tender flakes.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savoury fat and flavour that seasons the broth as it cooks.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the soaked biscuit mixture and the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring in the biscuit mixture. Lumps of soaked biscuit stay pasty if not beaten smooth first, so beat them out with a fork before adding. Adding them about 10 minutes before serving lets them thicken the broth without overcooking.

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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