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Chowder, Fish
Fillet a fresh haddock, and cut into half-inch squares. Boil the bones for two hours. Mince small one onion and a thick slice of bacon, and fry till of a light golden colour. Take two good-sized potatoes and cut into half-inch squares. Place in your cooking utensil a layer of potatoes and a layer of fish alternately, sprinkling each layer with the onion, bacon, chopped parsley, thyme, marjoram, pepper, and salt. Let the top layer be potatoes. Strain the liquor from the bones, and pour on the fish, etc. Cover, and stew for half an hour. Boil half a pint of milk and stir into it two ounces of rough ground captains' biscuit. Let it stand for five minutes; add to the other ingredients, stir, and boil up. Sprinkle with croutons of bread, fried crumbs, and chopped parsley. Serve very hot. Probable cost, 1s.
A British reading of the New England original, built in layers rather than stirred in a pot. Two things need adjusting before you start: the stock time and the biscuit.
- Boil the bones for 20 minutes, not two hoursFish frames give up all their flavour in 20 to 30 minutes; beyond that the stock turns bitter and glue-like from the collagen and the small bones. Simmer the head and frame in about 3 cups of water with the onion trimmings, then strain.
- Captains' biscuitA hard, unsweetened ship's biscuit, close to what Americans call hardtack. Two ounces of unsalted saltines or plain water biscuits, crushed to coarse crumbs (roughly a cup), does the same job of thickening the milk.
- Half a pint of milkAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups. Whole milk. Warm it rather than boiling it hard once the crumbs are in.
- Quantities the recipe assumesNo weight is given for the haddock. A whole fish of 2 to 3 lb yields about 1 lb of fillet, which is the right amount against two good-sized potatoes. Serves four as a main course.
- The baconUnsmoked streaky bacon or pancetta is closer to the intent than modern heavily smoked rashers, which will dominate the haddock. Render it slowly with the onion so the fat comes out before the onion colours.
- Don't let it boil after the milk goes inThe final "boil up" is the one instruction to ignore. Once the milk and cracker crumbs are added, bring it just to a tremble; a hard boil will curdle the milk and shred the fish, which by then has already had its half hour.
- The cooking utensilA heavy pot with a well-fitting lid, wide enough to build flat layers, with potatoes forming both the bottom and top layer as the recipe directs.
- Probable cost, 1sOne shilling for a dish feeding four marks this as everyday cooking rather than company food. Haddock and potatoes were both cheap and plentiful.
Chowder is generally traced to the fishing communities of the North Atlantic — Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New England — and the name is usually linked to the French chaudière, the cauldron in which a shared catch was cooked, though that etymology is traditional rather than settled. The layered construction here is the older form: alternating strata of salt pork, biscuit and fish, moistened and covered, with potatoes a later addition; the association with ships' cooks and shore parties is itself traditional rather than documented. Cassell's has quietly Anglicised the thing, swapping salt pork for bacon and reaching for haddock, while keeping the captains' biscuit that points to its seagoing ancestry. The garnish of croutons and fried crumbs is a late-Victorian domestic flourish.