Corn Chowder
1 ounce salt pork. 2 potatoes. 1 small onion. Salt and pepper 1 cup boiling water 1 pint can corn 1 pint hot milk Pare and slice the potatoes and onion. Cut the pork into small dice and put over the fire, cooking until crisp and brown, then add the potatoes, onion and boiling water. Boil for one half hour; add the hot milk, corn and seasoning; bring all to a boil and serve.
Croutons
A loose-leaf page that has lost part of its ingredient column: the potatoes, onion and salt pork are all called for in the method but their quantities are missing. Work from the method and use the proportions below.
- The missing amountsFor a pint can of corn and a pint of milk, figure on 3 medium potatoes, 1 medium onion and 2 to 3 oz of salt pork. That gives a chowder of chowder consistency rather than a thin soup.
- "Pork" means salt porkIn a 1900s chowder this is fat salt pork, diced and rendered until crisp. Thick-cut unsmoked bacon is the nearest supermarket substitute; smoked bacon will dominate the corn.
- A pint can of cornTwo cups of canned kernels, drained, or the same volume of frozen. Canned corn of the period was already fully cooked and often quite sweet, which is why it goes in at the very end.
- Half an hour is too longSliced potatoes in a cup of water are done in 15 to 20 minutes. Thirty minutes leaves them collapsing, and with only a cup of liquid the pan will run dry and scorch the pork fat.
- The hinge: do not boil after the milkThe hinge: go gently after the milk -- the instruction to "bring all to a boil" risks scorching the milk and throwing a skin on the surface. Bring it just to a bare simmer, until steam rises and the surface trembles, then serve.
- SeasoningSalt the chowder only after the pork has gone in; rendered salt pork carries a good deal on its own. A generous amount of black pepper is traditional here.
- CroutonsThe trailing word is the garnish. Split common crackers dropped into the bowl were also used with chowder in this period. Either works; add them at the table so they do not go soft.
- YieldAbout 7 cups, or five or six modest bowls as a first course, three as a supper.
Chowder in American cookery began as a fish dish along the northeastern coast, built on the same three-part frame this recipe uses: rendered salt pork, potatoes and onion, then milk at the end. Corn chowder is the pantry version of that frame, and its appearance in a soup section around the turn of the century says a good deal about canned goods, which by then made sweet corn a year-round staple in ordinary kitchens rather than a few weeks' summer treat. The word itself is generally traced to the French chaudière, the cauldron, though that derivation is traditional rather than settled. Mrs. Fryer's loose-leaf format printed recipes on removable sheets, so a cook could rearrange or replace them; the page reaches us with half its ingredient list gone.