[Sca-cooks] chowder

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Mark S. Harris:

>So, what is the differance between a "chowder" and a "soup"?
>
>
>I might have guessed chowder had milk and potatos but one of the
>Clam Chowders is tomato based. Is it a matter of thickness, with
>soup being thinner than a chowder? Or is this just a regional
>naming differance?

Heheheheh, step into my parlor, Stefan.

Most chowders (some exceptions being the various Caribbean conch
chowders, and some Southern soups called chowders because they fill
the niche otherwise occupied by chowder) are in fact _seafood_ based
(even corn chowder is corn based, and has milk or some such added to
enrich it, but it's not, strictly speaking, milk-based).

The earliest New England chowders, generally either fish and fish
stock, or clam and clam juice (the liquid that accumulates when you
open live, raw clams, or the broth from steamed clams, in extreme
cases), thickened, traditionally, with crushed ship's biscuit or New
England common crackers, which look like enormous Oyster Crackers. To
this (in addition to the non-negotiable salt pork -- sometimes bacon
but purists sneer at this -- and onion) is added an additional
thickening of _butter_, in the case of proto-New-England chowder.
Later versions have milk and/or cream added, and potatoes were added
to or substituted for, the ship's biscuit. Really modern versions
usually do involve milk or cream, a thickening of flour or roux, and
spuds.

Manhattan chowder, which is really Montauk Point Chowder, which is in
turn a variant of Block Island (which is in Rhode Island, which in
turn is in New England) -- look at a map and see how close Block
Island is to Orient Point, on the tip of Long Island) is made from
fish or clams and has tomatoes added near the end of the cooking
process instead of butter or cream. To confuse the issue further,
Lydia Child's 19th century recipe for New England Chowder says it is
greatly improved by adding a cup (!) of tomato ketchup to the chowder.

As you have mentioned, thickness is a characteristic chowder trait.
Early recipes for chowder are really quite a lot like a Lenten Irish
Stew, involving layering meat (in this case, fish), onions, and
potato slices, topping off with liquid (stock or water) and slowly
cooking, covered, preferably in the oven.

When you and I were in Rhode Island for EK 12th Night last winter,
Lady Marion mentioned an elusive and little-known white chowder,
which contains no milk or cream (not sure about butter), but also no
tomato.

The short answer is that real chowder is almost universally more like
a stew than a soup (which is ironic because some Texas authorities
claim chili con carne is more a soup than a stew ;-)  )

Adamantius, off to cram a child onto an airplane on the morning...

--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER