German Chowder
3 lb. haddock 1 beaten egg 1 quart cold water 1 quart potatoes cut in 3/4-inch cubes 2 slices carrot Bit of bay leaf 2-inch cube fat salt pork Sprig of parsley 1 sliced onion 1 cracker, pounded 5 tablespoons flour Salt, pepper, cayenne 1 quart scalded milk 2 tablespoons melted butter 1/4 cup butter Few drops onion juice 8 common crackers Clean, skin, and bone fish. Add to bones cold water and vegetables, and let simmer twenty minutes. Strain stock from bones. Chop fish meat; there should be one and one-half cups. Add cracker, seasonings, melted butter and egg, then shape in small balls. Try out pork, add onion, and cook five minutes. Strain, and add to fat, potatoes, balls, and fish stock, and cook until potatoes are soft. Thicken milk with butter and flour cooked together. Combine mixtures, and season highly with salt, pepper, and cayenne. Add crackers, split and soaked in cold milk.
Egg Balls I Yolks 2 "hard-boiled" eggs Few grains cayenne 1/8 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon melted butter Rub yolks through sieve, add seasonings, and moisten with raw egg yolk to make of consistency to handle. Shape in small balls, roll in flour, and saute in butter. Serve in Brown Soup Stock, Consomme, or Mock Turtle Soup.
A New England-style fish chowder with the fish worked into forcemeat balls rather than left in flakes. The whole thing hinges on the balls holding together, so keep the chopped fish mixture cold and firm before shaping.
- Fish quantityThree pounds of whole haddock will give more than the one and a half cups of chopped meat the recipe specifies, so measure rather than use all of it; the bones and skin are part of the point of the purchase, since the method makes stock from them. If you buy fillets, get about 12 oz and substitute a light fish stock or clam juice for the bone broth.
- Fat salt porkA two-inch cube is roughly 3 1/2 to 4 oz of salt pork belly. "Try out" means render slowly over moderate heat until the fat runs and the scraps are golden; unsmoked bacon or pancetta will stand in, though the flavour is less clean.
- Common crackersThese are the dry, thick New England common crackers, split in half, not saltines and not the small oyster cracker. Split and soaked in cold milk they swell and soften rather than dissolve. Saltines will turn to paste; unsalted water biscuits are the closer modern match.
- Onion juiceThe few drops of onion juice are listed but never placed in the directions; most likely they belong in the fish-ball mixture with the cracker, seasonings, butter and egg. Grate a piece of onion and press the pulp through a sieve, or use a very small amount of finely grated onion.
- Shaping and cooking the ballsMake them no larger than a hazelnut. They go in with the potatoes and poach in the stock, so handle them gently and do not stir hard once they are in the pot, or they will break up and cloud the chowder.
- The milkScalded means heated to just below a simmer, around 180F. Cook the quarter cup of butter with the five tablespoons flour for a minute or two before whisking in the hot milk, then combine with the fish mixture off a hard boil so the milk does not curdle against the salt.
- Seasoning"Season highly" is not decoration. The milk and potatoes absorb a great deal of salt, so taste after combining and again just before serving; the cayenne should register as warmth, not heat.
- YieldWith two quarts of liquid plus a quart of potatoes, this serves six to eight as a main course. It thickens considerably on standing and will need thinning with more scalded milk if reheated.
Chowder in American cookbooks of this period means the salt-pork-and-milk fish stew of the New England coast, built in layers from rendered pork fat, potatoes and hard crackers. The likeliest reason this version is called "German" is the fish forcemeat: instead of leaving the haddock in flakes, the meat is chopped, bound with pounded cracker and egg, and poached as small dumplings, a treatment that recalls the German and Central European tradition of Fischklösschen and Klösse served in broth, though the book gives no explanation of the name. National labels of this kind were often applied loosely in American cookery of the period. Haddock was a common and inexpensive fish on the Atlantic seaboard, and buying it whole gave the cook both the flesh and the bones for stock in one purchase.