Fish Chowder
Remove the bones and skin from 3 pounds of firm fleshed white fish and cut in three-inch pieces. Pare and dice sufficient raw potatoes to measure 1 pint. In a saucepan put 1 1/2 pound of finely diced fat salt pork and 2 chopped onions and fry slowly until the pork is well tried out and the onions begin to color. Add the potatoes, fish and 1 pint of boiling water and simmer for twenty minutes. Scald 1/2 pints of milk; thicken it with 1 tablespoonful each of butter and flour rubbed together to a paste. When smooth add this to the fish; season well and simmer for five minutes longer. Add 1 cupful of broken soda crackers and send at once to the table.
A straightforward New England chowder built on salt pork, onion, potato and fish, thickened at the end with a butter-flour paste rather than a roux at the start. Nothing here is difficult; the only real risk is overcooking the fish.
- Don't boil after the milk goes inOnce the scalded, thickened milk joins the pot, keep it at a bare simmer. A rolling boil will curdle the milk and shred the fish into threads.
- Volume measuresA pint of diced potato is about 2 cups, roughly 3/4 lb of peeled potato. The pint of boiling water is 2 cups. "Scald" the milk means heat it to just below boiling, when a ring of bubbles forms at the edge.
- The milk quantityThe printed figure for the milk is unclear. A chowder of this size takes about 3 cups (1 1/2 pints); scale to the consistency you want and add more if it is too thick.
- Fat salt porkSold as salt pork at some butchers; fatback is the same cut but uncured, so it will not season the pot the same way. Thick-cut unsmoked bacon is the nearest easy substitute, though it will read smokier; blanch it a minute in water first if you want to soften that. "Well tried out" means the fat has rendered and the dice are crisp.
- Choice of fishCod, haddock, pollock or hake all hold together. Skip flounder and sole, which fall apart. Three-inch pieces look large but are correct here: they stay in identifiable pieces instead of dissolving.
- TimingTwenty minutes is really the potatoes' timing, not the fish's. If your potato dice are small, add the fish after the first eight or ten minutes so it is just opaque and flaking when the milk goes in.
- Soda crackersSaltines or common crackers. Add them immediately before serving, as the recipe says, or they turn to paste.
- Yield and seasoningProbably about six servings as a main course, though the recipe gives no yield. Season only after the pork and crackers are in, since both carry considerable salt; white pepper or a bay leaf during the simmer are optional additions.
- Better the next dayChowder improves after several hours' rest, though the crackers should be added fresh. Reheat gently and never above a simmer.
Fish chowder is the oldest form of the dish in North America, predating the clam version that later overshadowed it. The layered method here uses salt pork rendered first, then onion, potato, fish, and milk last; eighteenth-century chowders were layered with ship's biscuit and salt pork, while the potatoes and milk are nineteenth-century developments. The name is generally traced to the French chaudière, the cauldron in which, by tradition, fishing communities on both sides of the Atlantic cooked up the day's unsold catch. Salt pork, potatoes, onions and crackers were pantry staples, and the recipe stretches three pounds of cheap white fish across six or more people. Broken crackers, thrown in as thickener and bulk at the last moment, are the survival of an older habit of lining the pot with hard ship's biscuit.