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Oyster Chowder

A creamy soup of pork, potatoes, onions, crackers, oysters, and milk, seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Oyster Chowder

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the pork in a pot.

  2. Add the sliced potatoes and onions; boil until nearly done.

  3. Soak the crackers in cold water for a few minutes.

  4. Add the soaked crackers, oysters, and milk to the pot. Boil together for a few minutes.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and butter.

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  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

Fat pork
Renders fat into the pot that carries flavour through the chowder.
Potatoes
Soften and thicken the broth, giving the chowder body.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they cook in the pork fat.
Crackers
Soak up liquid and thicken the milk into a creamy base.
Oysters
Provide the main seafood flavour and tender texture.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that the chowder is built on.

The step that matters

Boil together for a few minutes. Once the oysters and milk are in, boiling too hard or too long can curdle the milk and toughen the oysters. Keep the heat gentle so the oysters just firm and the milk stays smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

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