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Yankee Fish Chowder

A fish chowder made with salt pork, fish, potatoes, water, milk, and optional onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Yankee Fish Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the bottom of a deep saucepan with thin slices of salt pork.

Cook

  1. Layer sliced potatoes and fish alternately, seasoning each layer to taste.

  2. Add enough cold water to cover the layers and boil slowly for one hour.

  3. Add an equal amount of milk to the water, bring to a boil, and serve hot.

Variations

  1. Optionally, use half as many onions as potatoes or substitute clams for fish.

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

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

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Pork + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Renders fat into the pot, adding savory flavor to the chowder base.
Potatoes
Soften during slow simmering and add body and starch that thicken the broth.
Fish
Flakes into tender pieces as it cooks, contributing the main protein and flavor.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the broth once it is combined and heated.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for one hour. A gentle simmer lets the potatoes cook through and release starch without breaking the fish apart. A hard boil would toughen the fish and make the broth cloudy.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, fish, potato, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, fish, 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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