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Fish Chowder

A stew of haddock or striped bass with salt pork, crackers, onions, and seasonings, thickened with cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Fry the salt pork in an iron pot until crisp.

  2. Remove the pork and chop it.

Layer and stew

  1. Layer the fish, split crackers, and chopped pork in the pot, seasoning with red and black pepper and chopped onion.

  2. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used.

  3. Cover with water and stew slowly until the fish is tender.

Finish the gravy

  1. Thicken the gravy with cracker crumbs and catsup if desired.

  2. Remove the fish.

  3. Boil the gravy.

  4. Add lemon juice.

  5. Pour it over the fish.

  6. Add salt if necessary.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Onion + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock or striped bass
Forms the main body of the chowder, becoming tender and flaky as it stews.
Salt pork
Renders fat that carries flavor through the pot and adds savory depth to the gravy.
Split crackers
Soak up liquid and help thicken the broth into a richer gravy.
Cracker crumbs
Thicken the gravy further when stirred in at the end.
Chopped onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory base flavor to the stew.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until the fish is tender. Gentle, low heat cooks the fish through while keeping it intact; vigorous boiling breaks up the delicate flakes and makes the gravy cloudy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, pork, pepper, onion. 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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