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Fish Chowder (With Milk)
One pound of cod or haddock, four small potatoes, one small onion, one thin slice of fat salt pork, one cup of milk and one cup of fish stock, two tablespoons of flour, salt and pepper for seasoning. Place the bones, after removing them from the fish, in cold water, allowing it to heat gradually. Scald the potatoes, sliced thin, in boiling water for five minutes. Cut the pork in half inch cubes and try out the fat. Add the onions and heat in the fat. Then remove the pieces of pork and add the potatoes and the fish cut in mediumsized pieces. Dredge with flour and seasoning and then strain the fish stock over. Cook until the potatoes are done and the fish is tender, adding hot water if it is needed during the cooking. Add the milk, reheat and season again if necessary. Serve hot.
A compact, one-pound chowder that builds its own stock from the fish frames. The instructions assume you are filleting the fish yourself, which is where most of the flavour comes from.
- Start the stock firstThe bones go into cold water and come up to heat slowly, which helps keep the broth clear. Twenty to thirty minutes of gentle simmering is generally enough; fish bones are often said to turn the stock bitter if simmered much longer. Ask the fish counter for the frame if you buy fillets.
- "Try out the fat"Render the diced salt pork slowly in a dry pan over medium-low heat until the cubes are crisp and a few tablespoons of fat have run out. Rushing this scorches the pork and leaves the fat tasting acrid.
- Salt pork substitutesSalt pork is still sold, usually near the bacon. Unsmoked pork belly or thick-cut bacon works, though bacon brings smoke the original did not have. Rinse and pat dry if the pork is heavily salted, and hold back on the seasoning salt until the end.
- Scalding the potatoesThe five-minute blanch in boiling water part-cooks the slices and rinses off surface starch, which may help keep the milk from going gluey. Use a waxy or all-purpose potato, sliced thin; "four small potatoes" is somewhere around 8 to 12 oz.
- Don't boil after the milk goes inThis is the hinge. Once the cup of milk is added, bring it only to a bare steam. A boil curdles the milk against the salt and the acid in the fish, and it shreds the fish into threads.
- Fish timingCod and haddock in medium pieces are done in five to seven minutes at a simmer. Add them when the potatoes are nearly tender rather than at the same moment, despite the order given, or they will fall apart before the potatoes soften.
- The flourTwo tablespoons dredged over the pan is a light thickening, not a chowder that stands up a spoon. The recipe dredges it over the potatoes and fish in the pork fat; let it cook a moment before the strained stock goes over, or it will taste raw.
- YieldTwo generous bowls or three modest ones. The proportions scale straight up; a pound of fish per two cups of liquid is the working ratio.
- ServingReturn the crisp pork cubes to the top at the table so they stay crunchy. Common crackers or split water biscuits were the period accompaniment.
Fish chowder was the everyday dinner of the New England coast, and by the time this book was compiled the argument over milk had already hardened into regional identity: milk or cream in Boston, tomatoes and no dairy along parts of the Rhode Island and New York shore. The word chowder is generally traced to the French chaudière, the cauldron a fishing crew cooked in, the dish taking its name from the pot rather than the contents. The structure here is old and stable — rendered salt pork, onion, sliced potato, layered fish, thickened lightly and finished with dairy — and the small quantities suggest a recipe written for a household cooking one pound of fish rather than feeding a boat crew.