Clam Chowder
4 cups clams 4 cups potatoes cup onion cup salt pork cut in cubes 2 tablespoons flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon tabasco sauce 2 cups boiling water 4 cups milk, scalded 2 tablespoons butter Remove heads from clams and chop. Parboil potatoes.
Cook onion and salt pork together ten minutes. Arrange clams, potatoes, onion, and salt pork in layers in the kettle; cover with boiling water, and simmer until tender. Thicken milk with flour and butter cooked together; add fish mixture and seasonings, and serve.
A New England-style chowder from a period when clams were bought in the shell and the milk went in last. The method is sound; a few of the quantities and terms need translating.
- The clams"Remove heads from clams and chop" most likely refers to soft-shell (steamer) clams: the tough dark neck and siphon skin are trimmed away and the meat chopped. Four cups is a large quantity of shucked meat; buy it shucked by volume rather than working from a bushel equivalent.
- Save the liquorIf you shuck the clams yourself, strain and use the clam liquor as part of the two cups of boiling water. It is the main source of flavor in a chowder this plainly seasoned.
- Do not overcook the clamsClams need only two or three minutes to firm up; a long simmer turns them to rubber. Cook the potatoes, onion, and pork in the liquid until tender, then add the clams at the end rather than layering them in from the start.
- Salt porkSalt pork is cured pork fat, usually from the belly or side, cut here in small cubes and rendered with the onion until the fat runs. Thick-cut unsmoked bacon is the closest supermarket substitute; if you use smoked bacon the chowder will taste of it.
- Parboil the potatoesPeel and cut them in half-inch dice and boil five minutes before they go in the kettle. Waxy potatoes hold their shape; russets will break down and thicken the chowder further.
- Thickening the milkThe flour and butter are cooked together into a roux, then the scalded milk is whisked in off the heat to avoid lumps. Keep the finished chowder below a simmer once the milk is in, or it will curdle and the roux will scorch.
- SeasoningA full teaspoon of Tabasco is assertive by modern standards for a milk chowder; start with a quarter teaspoon and add to taste. The recipe calls for no black pepper, which many cooks would want to add.
- YieldAbout three and a half to four quarts, enough for eight or more generous bowls. Chowder is better the next day, but reheat it gently and do not let it boil.
Clam chowder built on milk rather than tomato is the New England form, and it appears in many American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when soft-shell clams were cheap and locally abundant along the Atlantic coast. The word chowder is usually traced to the French chaudière, a cauldron, though this derivation is traditional rather than firmly documented, as is the story of fishermen's communal pots; the layering of pork, potato, and shellfish in the kettle is a standard feature of early chowder recipes. The Tabasco is the newer element: bottled pepper sauce was widely available by the time this book appeared.