Potato Chowder
For lunch a potato chowder makes a hearty dish. Pare and cut into dice 6 large potatoes; chop fine I onion; put 1/4 of a pound of fat ham or salt pork through the food chopper. Cook the meat and onion slowly together in a saucepan until the latter begins to color. Add the potatoes, 1/2 teaspoonful of salt and ¼ of a teaspoonful of white pepper and mix, then add 1 pint of boiling water and simmer gently until the potatoes are almost done. In the meantime make a sauce with 1 tablespoonful of butter, I heaping tablespoonful of flour and 1 pint of milk. Pour this into the first saucepan, add more salt and I2 pepper if necessary and simmer for five minutes longer. A moment before taking from the fire stir in I heaping tablespoonful of finely chopped parsley.
A straightforward salt-pork-and-potato chowder that comes together in about 40 minutes. The only real technique is the white sauce, which must be made and thickened separately before it meets the potatoes.
- The hinge: thicken the milk firstThe flour-and-butter sauce is built in its own pan and poured in finished. If you tip raw flour into the potato pot it will settle and scorch, and the milk will thin out rather than bind. Cook the roux a minute, add the pint of milk gradually, and let it come to a simmer before combining.
- Salt pork and fat hamThe recipe allows either; a quarter of a pound of cured pork is what carries the flavour, and a fatty piece of bacon or pancetta stands in well. Rendered slowly with the onion, it should give up enough fat that no extra is needed. The recipe salts twice — half a teaspoonful with the potatoes, more at the end if needed — so taste before the second addition, as cure strengths vary.
- Through the food chopperThat is a hand-cranked grinder. A fine dice by knife does the same job, and grinding in a processor turns the pork to paste.
- QuantitiesOne pint of water and one pint of milk is two cups each — a fairly loose chowder for six large potatoes. Waxy potatoes hold their dice; russets will break down and thicken the pot further.
- "Simmer gently until almost done"The recipe does not give a dice size; for roughly half-inch pieces figure 12-15 minutes. Stopping short matters, since they finish in the five minutes after the milk goes in, and milk added to fully soft potatoes gives a mush.
- Keep it below a boilOnce the milk is in, hold it at a bare simmer. A hard boil on a floury, dairy-based soup will catch on the bottom of the pan and can curdle it.
- YieldServes four to six as a lunch dish with bread.
Chowder in American cookbooks of this period was a broad family rather than a fixed dish: a foundation of salt pork rendered with onion, then whatever bulk was cheap — fish, clams, corn, or as here, plain potatoes. The name is generally traced to the French chaudière, the cauldron in which such one-pot meals were cooked, and the technique is often said to have travelled down the Atlantic coast from the fishing communities of the Maritimes and New England. A potato chowder belongs squarely to a low-cost collection: it takes the flavour of a fish or clam chowder from a quarter pound of cured pork and gets its substance from potatoes, flour and milk, all cellar and doorstep staples. The finishing handful of parsley, stirred in off the heat, gave a pale soup some colour at the table.