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Farmer's Chowder
Parboil and slice 6 good potatoes. Chop and fry half a pound of salt pork, and when it begins to crisp add a minced onion and cook to a light brown. Pack the potatoes, pork, and onion in a soup-kettle, sprinkling each layer with minced parsley and pepper. Add the hot pork fat; cover with a pint of boiling water, and cook gently for half an hour. Turn into a colander and drain the liquor back into the pot.
Have a pint of hot milk ready, into which a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour has been stirred. Place this in the kettle containing the liquor, cook one minute, add the potatoes to the kettle, and serve.
A potato and salt pork chowder built in layers, thickened at the last minute with a milk-and-butter binding. Nothing here is obsolete; the only real risks are oversalting and curdling.
- Salt porkHalf a pound of salt pork is genuinely salty; taste the broth before adding any salt at the end. If your pork is very heavily cured, blanch the dice in water for a few minutes and drain before frying.
- Parboil, don't cook throughThe recipe boils the potatoes first and slices them after. They go on to simmer another half hour and then get handled twice, so parboil only until a knife meets resistance. Fully softened potatoes will collapse into mash in the colander.
- "Butter rolled in flour"This is beurre manié: work a tablespoon of soft butter with roughly an equal amount of flour into a paste, then whisk it into the hot milk off the heat so it disperses without lumping.
- The hinge: keep the milk below a boilOnce the milk goes in, the pot should never come above a bare tremble. Boiling milk against salty pork liquor is the classic way to get a broken, grainy chowder.
- Pint measuresA pint is 2 cups. The pint of boiling water plus the pint of milk gives about a quart of liquid, which is a thin chowder by modern taste; hold back some of the water if you want it closer to a stew.
- Draining stepThe colander stage exists to keep the potatoes intact while the milk is thickened. Have a warm bowl under the colander or work quickly, since the potatoes cool fast and there is only a one-minute reheat.
- YieldNo yield is given; on these quantities it will stretch to roughly 4 as a main course with bread, or 6 as a first course.
- FinishingA little more minced parsley and a few grinds of pepper at the table are in keeping; common crackers or soda crackers crumbled in were a frequent accompaniment to chowders of this period.