Corn Chowder
1/2 can corn 1 pint sliced potatoes 2 tablespoons butter 1 onion sliced 1 pint of milk 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 cup water Cook the onion in the double boiler in one-half the butter for twenty minutes. Add the sliced potatoes and one cup boiling water. Cook directly over the flame until the potatoes are tender. Add the corn, milk and the remainder of the butter. Heat to the boiling point, add the salt, and serve hot over crackers.
A plain New England chowder built without salt pork, which is the point of the book it comes from. Two things need translating: the canned-corn measure and the double boiler.
- "1/2 can corn"Canned sweet corn of this period was commonly sold in what grocers called a No. 2 can, about 20 ounces. Half of that is somewhere around a cup of kernels; a modern 15-ounce can, drained, gives a little more than that and will do.
- A pint of sliced potatoesVolume, not weight. A pint of raw slices is about 10-12 ounces of potato, or two medium ones. Cut them thin, around 1/4 inch, so they cook through in the small amount of water given.
- The double boilerIt keeps the onion softening in butter without browning, which would darken the chowder. A heavy saucepan over low heat for 8 to 10 minutes does much the same job; the twenty minutes reflects how gentle the heat over water is.
- "Heat to the boiling point"Take this as the signal to stop, not a target. Milk held at a full boil will scorch on the bottom. Bring it to a bare steam with the surface just trembling.
- SaltHalf a teaspoon for this quantity is modest, and the crackers served with it will add more. Season at the end and expect to add more, plus pepper, which the recipe omits entirely.
- Serving over crackersThe recipe does not specify which; in New England this would most likely have meant a common cracker or plain water biscuit, split and laid in the bowl so the broth soaks in. Oyster crackers or saltines are the practical substitute.
- YieldRoughly a quart and a half by the measures given, serving four. It thickens as it stands; loosen with a little more milk when reheating, again without boiling.
Chowder is generally traced to the French chaudière, the cauldron in which fishermen along the Atlantic coast cooked up a communal pot. Corn chowder is the inland, thrifty cousin, and its appearance here without a scrap of pork is deliberate. The recipe leans on canned corn without apology, which says something about how thoroughly commercial canning had entered the ordinary pantry by then; sweet corn was one of the earliest vegetables canned at scale in the United States, and a cook in February could count on it when fresh ears were half a year away.