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Fish Chowder

A soup made with haddock, salt pork, onions, potatoes, water, milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

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

Fish Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, bone, and skin the haddock, then boil the head separately in water.

  2. In a kettle, fry slices of salt pork until browned.

  3. Thinly slice the onions and fry them in the salt pork fat with a little water, covering while frying.

Make the chowder

  1. Layer the fish and then the potatoes in the kettle, pouring in the water from the boiled haddock head.

  2. Cook until the potatoes can be easily pierced with a fork.

  3. Add milk to the kettle and let it boil once.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper, then add a lump of 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. 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. 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

Haddock
Forms the flesh of the chowder and flakes as it cooks, giving the main body of the dish.
Salt pork
Its rendered fat carries flavour into the onions and adds savoury richness to the broth.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, adding aromatic depth to the chowder.
Potatoes
Cook until tender and thicken the broth slightly, giving the chowder body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the broth.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded richness to the finished chowder.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Once milk is added, letting it boil only once helps prevent it from curdling or scorching on the bottom of the kettle, keeping the broth smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, pork, potato, milk, butter, 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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