Skip to main content
Main

Clam Chowder

A thick soup made with clams, potatoes, onions, salt pork, crackers, and hot milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and potato 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 ↓

Clam Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Fry salt pork in an iron pot and remove it, leaving the fat.

  2. Slice the onion and add it to the pot with 2-3 slices of pork.

Layer and cook

  1. Layer diced potatoes, chopped clams, pepper, salt, onion, bits of fried pork, and broken crackers in the pot.

  2. Add clam liquor and enough water to cover the layers.

  3. Cook for 20 minutes or until the potatoes are done.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in hot 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Clam + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  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

Clams
Provide the main seafood flavor and savory body of the chowder.
Potatoes
Soften during cooking and thicken the broth with their starch.
Salt pork
Its rendered fat carries flavor through the pot and seasons the base.
Crackers
Break down into the broth and help thicken the chowder.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the finished chowder.

The step that matters

Stir in the hot milk just before serving. Milk that boils for long can scorch on the bottom of the pot and curdle or separate. Adding it hot at the end keeps the chowder smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

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

More clam chowder recipes

Baked 5New England 5Coney Island 3Manhattan 3 See all 243 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes