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Vegetable Chowder

A thickened vegetable chowder made with potatoes, carrots, onions, tomatoes, and milk, seasoned with salt and optional salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Vegetable Chowder

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Combine potatoes and carrots with enough water to cover in a pot.

  2. Cook for 20 minutes without draining.

Make the chowder

  1. Brown the chopped onion in the fat in a skillet for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the browned onion and canned tomatoes to the cooked vegetables.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the skim milk and thicken the chowder with flour.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  5. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 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

Potatoes
Break down partly during cooking to give the chowder body and a thick texture.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the chowder a creamy, smooth body.
Skim milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the chowder, adding richness and mild sweetness.
Onions
Browning in fat builds sweet, savory flavor that underpins the chowder.
Canned tomatoes
Add acidity and tomato flavor that balances the milk and starchy vegetables.

The step that matters

Stir in the skim milk and thicken with flour. Flour must be fully mixed in before or as the milk heats, or it clumps and leaves lumps. Once the mixture is boiling, the milk can scorch on the bottom of the pot, so keep stirring.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Cuminfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, carrot, pork, onion, flour, tomato, 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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