[Sca-cooks] Yankees, Hash, and Beets, was and still is: Winter comfort food...

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

I was bored, so I went chowder-hunting.  This is what I caught:

Fanny Farmer's recipes (1918) for "Connecticut Chowder" and "Rhode Island Chowder" include tomatoes, in addition to potatoes and milk.

"Mrs. Beecher's Housekeep and Healthkeeper" (1873) gives the following directions for clam chowder:

Clam Chowder. —Take alternate layers of crackers wet in milk, and clams with their liquor, and thin slices of fried salt pork. Season with black pepper and salt. Boil three quarters of an hour. Put this into a tureen, having drained off some liquor which is to be thickened with flour or pounded crackers, seasoned with catsup and wine, and then poured into the tureen. Serve with pickles. 

Lydia Child, in "The Frugal Housewife" (1830) says in her recipe for chowder, "A cup of Tomato catsup is very excellent.  Some people put in a cup of beer."

Sarah Josepha Hale's recipe for chowder in "The Good Housekeeper" (1839) has cod, fat pork, onions, crackers, herbs, and water, but no milk or potatoes.

"Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cookbook" (1884) has tomatoes in the corn chowder recipe.

A recipe for chowder in "The Improved Housewife" (Hartford, CT., 1851) starts off with fish, pork, onions, crackers, water, and spices.  "After stewing about twenty minutes, take up the fish, and mix two teaspoonfuls of flour with a little water, and stir it into the gravy; adding a little pepper and butter. A tumbler of wine, catsup, and spices will improve it."  No milk or potatoes are mentioned.

James F.W. Johnston, a Scottish agricultural chemist, wrote in "Notes on North America" (1851):

"Parties of ten to twenty are most common at a clam bake, but sometimes a hundred together will set out with this, among other things in view, for their day's amusement. "On the occasion of a grand political meeting in favour of General Harrison, on the 4th of July 1840, nearly 10,000 persons assembled in Rhode Island, for whom a clam bake and a chowder were prepared." The chowder is a stew of fish, pork, onions, and biscuit, generally prepared on such occasions from fish caught on the spot."
Some dictionary definitions:

Oxford English Dictionary (online edition): In Newfoundland, New England, etc.: A dish made of fresh fish (esp. cod) or clams, stewed with slices of pork or bacon, onions, and biscuit.

The 1872 ed. of Noah Webster's dictionary: A dish made of fresh fish, pork, biscuit, onions, &c., stewed together. 

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)  (Cookery) A dish made of fresh fish or clams, biscuit, onions, etc., stewed together.

Tomato may not be a quintessential ingredient of a New England chowder, but neither is it a latter-day foreign interloper.  Likewise, potatoes and milk are common ingredients, but are not required in a traditional chowder.



Brighid ni Chiarain
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom