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Corn Chowder

A creamy soup made with corn, potatoes, onions, butter, crackers, water, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Corn Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a porcelain kettle, melt the butter and cook the chopped onions until tender.

Cook the chowder

  1. Add the corn, sliced potatoes, crushed crackers, and water; bring to a boil.

  2. Cook until the potatoes are done.

  3. Do not stir while cooking to maintain appearance.

Finish and serve

  1. In a separate dish, bring the milk to a boil and add it to the chowder.

  2. Let everything boil together once before serving.

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. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  5. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Softened in butter, they build the sweet, savoury base of the chowder.
Potatoes
Their starch thickens the broth as they cook and gives the chowder body.
Crackers
Crushed crackers absorb liquid and add starch, helping thicken the chowder.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the broth.
Corn
Adds natural sweetness and texture to the chowder.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and boiling it together. Milk can curdle or scorch when it is overheated or boiled hard for too long. Heating it separately and then bringing the chowder to a single gentle boil keeps the milk smooth and the dish creamy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, corn, potato, 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.

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