Skip to main content
Main

Clam Chowder

A creamy soup made with clams, salt pork, onions, potatoes, butter, flour, and milk, served with crackers.

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 clams

  1. Boil the clams in water, then remove from the shells.

  2. Strain the clam liquor.

Make the chowder

  1. Fry the salt pork and chopped onion until brown and crisp.

  2. Cook the sliced potatoes in water until tender.

  3. Add the clam liquor, pork scraps, and onion to the potatoes.

  4. Melt the butter in a pan. Stir in the flour. Mix with some of the hot clam liquor.

  5. Combine this mixture with the chowder and add the clams.

  6. Stir in the rich milk and serve with 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. 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  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 flavour and texture of the chowder, and their liquor adds savoury depth.
Salt pork
Renders fat and leaves crisp, browned bits that add savoury flavour.
Potatoes
Soften during cooking and thicken the chowder while adding body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and with flour forms the thickening base.
Flour
Thickens the chowder when cooked with butter and clam liquor.
Rich milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the finished chowder.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with butter and hot clam liquor. Flour must be cooked in butter and blended with hot liquid carefully, or it clumps instead of thickening the chowder smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clam, pork, potato, butter, flour, 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