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Fish Chowder

A hearty soup made with fish, salt pork, carrots, potatoes, onions, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Fish Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Fry and simmer the vegetables

  1. Cut the salt pork into small pieces and fry with the chopped onion for five minutes.

  2. Put the pork, onion, carrots, and potatoes in a kettle and cover with boiling water.

  3. Cook until the vegetables are tender.

Thicken and add the fish

  1. Mix the flour with ½ cup of cold milk and stir into the pot to thicken.

  2. Add the remaining milk and the fish, which has been removed from the bone and cut into small pieces.

  3. Cook until the fish is tender, about 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Renders fat that carries flavor through the chowder.
Potatoes
Starchy body that softens and helps thicken the broth.
Flour
Starch that thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy base.
Milk
Adds creamy richness and body to the broth.
Fish
Main protein that cooks gently in the broth until tender and flaky.

The step that matters

Mix the flour with cold milk before stirring it in. Starch granules clump when they hit hot liquid directly. Dispersing the flour in cold milk first lets it blend evenly, so the chowder thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, carrot, pork, potato, milk, flour, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, carrot, pork, potato, milk, flour, 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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