Corn Chowder
Dice or chop fine 1/4 of a pound of fat pork, put in a kettle and when well tried out add 2 white onions sliced thin. Cook slowly until they begin to brown, then add 1 pint of diced raw potatoes, 1 pint of corn scraped from the ear and sufficient boiling water to cover. When the potatoes are tender stir in 2 tablespoonfuls of }
A New England-style chowder built on rendered salt pork rather than butter. The text breaks off mid-instruction, so the finish has to be reconstructed from standard practice of the period.
- The missing endingThe page cuts off at "stir in 2 tablespoonfuls of". Flour, creamed with butter or slaked in a little cold milk, is the likeliest candidate, followed by scalded milk and split common crackers; butter is also possible. Many period corn chowders finish along these lines, but the text itself does not say.
- Fat porkThis is salt pork, not fresh — the fatty side pork sold in a brick by the bacon. A quarter pound is about 4 oz. Unsmoked salt pork is worth seeking out; bacon works but brings smoke the recipe does not intend.
- "Tried out"Rendered. Cube the pork small, start it in a cold heavy pot over medium-low heat, and give it 8 to 10 minutes until the fat runs clear and the scraps are gold. Fish out the cracklings if you want them crisp on top rather than soft in the bowl.
- A pint, by volumeBoth the potatoes and the corn are measured as 2 cups by volume, not by weight. That is roughly 10 to 12 oz of diced potato and the kernels from three to four medium ears.
- Scraped from the earScraping, rather than cutting, is deliberate: you split the kernels and press out the milky pulp, which thickens the chowder and carries most of the sweetness. Cut the tops off the kernels first, then run the back of the knife down the cob. Frozen corn will not give you that liquid.
- Water to cover, and no more"Sufficient boiling water to cover" means just barely; with a quart of solids in the pot that is likely 2 to 3 cups. The potato starch and the corn milk are doing the thickening, and drowning them gives a thin soup. Potatoes take 12 to 15 minutes at a bare simmer.
- Milk goes in off the boilIf you add the customary milk at the end, bring it only to a scald. Boiling milk over corn and salt pork curdles readily and dulls the sweetness. Chowder is also better for standing an hour and being reheated gently.
- YieldServes four generously as a main course with crackers or bread, six as a first course.
Chowder in nineteenth-century American cookery meant a layered pot of salt pork, onion, potato and crackers, with fish or clams as the usual body; corn chowder is the farm-country version that substitutes what the kitchen garden had in August. The word is generally traced to the French chaudière, the cauldron in which fishing communities of the North Atlantic cooked communal suppers, though that derivation is traditional rather than settled. It is cheap food by design: a quarter pound of the cheapest cut of preserved pork, two onions, potatoes, corn and milk feed a family, and the salt pork supplies fat, seasoning and savour in a single ingredient.