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Coney Island Chowder, with Thyme

A clam chowder with potatoes, onions, salt pork, tomatoes, thyme, and crackers.

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 ↓

Coney Island Chowder, with Thyme

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chowder

  1. Boil diced potatoes in 3 pints of water for 10 minutes.

  2. Add clams and canned tomatoes; boil for 5 more minutes and skim the surface.

  3. Fry diced salt pork until crispy; add scraps to the chowder.

  4. In the remaining fat, fry sliced onions until light brown, then add to the chowder.

  5. Boil the chowder for an additional 10 minutes; season with salt, pepper, and thyme.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, break in common crackers.

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. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Hold their shape as chunks and thicken the broth slightly as their starch releases.
Clams
Provide the main briny, savory flavor of the chowder.
Salt pork
Adds rendered fat and savory depth for frying the onions and flavoring the broth.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they brown in the rendered pork fat.
Canned tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the broth.
Common crackers
Soften slightly in the hot broth, adding body and thickening.

The step that matters

Skim the surface after adding the clams and tomatoes. Clams and tomatoes release foam and impurities as they heat; skimming keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting before the longer simmer.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Okrafits about as well

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