Corn Chowder
2 cups cooked corn cut from cob, or 1 can of corn. 1 cup salt pork cubes. 1 cup potatoes cut in cubes. 1½ onion sliced. 3 cups water. 2 cups scalded milk. 1 tablespoon butter. 1 tablespoon flour. 2/3 cup cracker crumbs.
Salt, Pepper.
PROCESS: Cut salt pork in one-fourth inch cubes and try out in a frying pan; add onion, and cook until yellow. Pare and cut potatoes in one-half inch cubes, parboil five minutes. Add to onion, with corn and water; cover and cook twenty minutes or until potatoes are soft. Melt butter in a sauce-pan, add flour, stir to a smooth paste, pour some of the milk on slowly, stirring constantly. Combine mixtures; add crumbs and seasonings. Serve for dinner in cups or in small "nappies."
A New England-style chowder written for a cook who already knew what salt pork and a nappy were. Nothing here is difficult, but several of the terms and one or two of the proportions need translating.
- "Try out" the porkThis means render it slowly over medium-low heat until the cubes are crisp and the fat has run out. Rush it and the pork browns hard on the outside while the fat stays locked in, leaving you without enough drippings to cook the onion.
- Salt pork todaySalt content varies from brand to brand, so taste before adding any salt at the end. Thick-cut bacon works, though it brings smoke the original never had.
- "1½ onion"Onion size is the ambiguity here. Roughly one cup of sliced onion gets you where the recipe intends.
- Canned cornDrain it, or the packing liquid will thin the chowder and dull the flavor. Frozen corn kernels, about 2 cups, are closer to the cut-from-the-cob original than canned.
- Scalded milkScalding means heating just until bubbles ring the edge of the pan, around 180F, not boiling. The step dates from unpasteurized milk and is now optional, but warming the milk still keeps the chowder from cooling off when the two mixtures are combined.
- Don't boil after the milk goes inOnce the milk and roux are combined with the corn and potatoes, hold it below a simmer. A hard boil will curdle the milk.
- Cracker crumbsThese are the thickener and the body of the dish, not a garnish. Use plain unsalted soda crackers or common crackers crushed fine; they will swell and soften in a few minutes off the heat.
- NappiesA nappy is a small shallow bowl with sloping sides, standard in a Victorian and Edwardian dinner service. Any soup plate or wide bowl does the same job.
- YieldAbout four to six servings as a first course, three or four as a main. It thickens noticeably on standing, so thin with a little milk when reheating.
Corn chowder belongs to the same New England family as clam and fish chowder, and follows the same skeleton: salt pork tried out for fat, onion softened in the drippings, potatoes, liquid, milk, and crackers to thicken. The word chowder is generally traced to the French chaudière, the cauldron in which coastal cooks built up such a stew, and the crackers are the surviving trace of the ship's biscuit that once did the thickening. A corn version made sense in cold weather: canned sweet corn was cheap and reliably available all winter, when fresh corn was a purely seasonal luxury, and the recipe lets the cook fall back on the can without apology. The instruction to serve it in cups or nappies rather than soup plates marks it as a course in a dinner, not a supper in itself.