Clam Chowder
1 quart clams 1 tablespoon salt 4 cups potatoes cut in 3/4-inch cubes 1/8 teaspoon pepper 4 tablespoons butter 1 1/2 inch cube fat salt pork 4 cups scalded milk 1 sliced onion 8 common crackers Clean and pick over clams, using one cup cold water; drain, reserve liquor, heat to boiling-point, and strain. Chop finely hard part of clams; cut pork in small pieces and try out; add onion, fry five minutes, and strain into a stewpan. Parboil potatoes five minutes in boiling water to cover; drain, and put a layer in bottom of stewpan, add chopped clams, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and dredge generously with flour; add remaining potatoes, again sprinkle with salt and pepper, dredge with flour, and add two and one-half cups boiling water. Cook ten minutes, add milk, soft part of clams, and butter; boil three minutes, and add crackers split and soaked in enough cold milk to moisten. Reheat clam water to boiling-point, and thicken with one tablespoon butter and flour cooked together. Add to chowder just before serving.
The clam water has a tendency to cause the milk to separate, hence is added at the last.
A New England chowder in the older style, layered and dredged with flour in the pot rather than thickened at the end. The one line that governs the whole dish is the last one: the strained clam liquor goes in at the very end, off the boil, or the acid and salt in it will curdle the milk.
- A quart of clamsThis means a quart of shucked clams with their liquor, not clams in the shell. Traditionally soft-shell (steamer) clams; figure roughly 4 to 5 dozen, or about 2 lb shucked. Chopped canned clams plus bottled clam juice will stand in, using about 3 cups drained meat.
- Hard part and soft partSoft-shell clams divide into the tough neck and mantle, which is chopped and cooked with the potatoes, and the tender belly, which goes in near the end. Keeping them separate is what prevents the whole pot from turning to rubber.
- Try out the pork"Try out" means render slowly over moderate heat until the fat runs and the scraps are golden. Straining the fat and onion into the stewpan, as written, discards the onion and the pork scraps; the scraps can be left in if preferred.
- Common crackersBoston or Vermont common crackers were dense, unsalted, and split like an English muffin. They are still made in New England but are not a supermarket item; unsalted saltines or oyster crackers, soaked in cold milk until soft, do the same work of thickening and body.
- Flour is unmeasured"Dredge generously" between the potato layers comes to about 2 to 3 tablespoons in total. The finishing roux calls for one tablespoon butter with an equal amount of flour.
- Scalded milkScalding meant heating to just below the boil, originally to knock back raw milk. With pasteurized milk it is only a matter of not shocking the pot with cold liquid; warm it and move on.
- Watch the boilingThe three-minute boil after the milk goes in is more than a milk-based chowder wants. Bring it to a bare simmer instead, long enough to heat the clam bellies through, and the chowder will be smoother and the clams tender.
- YieldAbout 3 quarts, serving six to eight as a first course or four to five as a meal. Chowder of this kind is better on the second day, though reheat it gently.
Clam chowder in this form belongs to the New England shore kitchen, where soft-shell clams were dug free at low tide and salt pork was the cooking fat of the household. The layering method here, potatoes and clams stacked in the pot with flour dredged between, is older than the roux-first chowders that came later, and the split common cracker soaked in milk is the last survivor of the ship's biscuit that thickened the earliest chowders. The word itself is generally traced to the French chaudiere, the cauldron in which fishermen cooked their catch, though that connection is traditional rather than firmly documented. The careful note at the end about adding the clam water last is the mark of a cookery-school author writing for readers who had curdled a chowder and wanted to know why.