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Fish Chowder

A hearty soup made with fish, salt pork, potatoes, carrots, 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

Prepare the base

  1. Cut the salt pork into small pieces.

  2. Fry the salt pork with the sliced onion for five minutes.

  3. Add the pork, onions, carrots, and potatoes to a kettle.

  4. Cover with boiling water.

  5. Cook until the vegetables are tender.

Thicken and finish

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

  2. Remove the fish from the bones and cut into small pieces.

  3. Add the fish and remaining milk.

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

  5. 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. Potato + carrottop 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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 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 flavours the frying onion and the whole chowder base.
Flour
Thickens the milk and broth into a creamy, body-rich chowder.
Potatoes
Soften during cooking and give the chowder its body and bulk.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the broth.
Fish
Provides the main protein and flavour of the chowder.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour mixture. Flour thickens only when heated in liquid and stirred, so lumps can form if it is added cold or not dispersed first. Mixing it with cold milk before adding it to the pot helps it blend smoothly as the chowder thickens.

Swap the onion

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

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

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