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Clam Chowders

WHATEVER THE LOCALE, beach chowder makers generally agree that a proper potful begins with the slow frying of bits of salt pork. But from this point on, arguments blaze with more heat than can flare up around any other culinary battle. The dispute begins mildly over whether the onion should follow the salt pork into the pot and be tendered in simmering pork fat, or whether it should go in with the potatoes after liquid has been added. Massachusetts cooks the onion with the pork, while Maine generally cooks it with the potatoes, and some Rhode Islanders leave out onion altogether or else use so little that it cannot be detected. Next is the choice of clams, whether to use hard clams, known as quahogs, or soft clams, known as steamers. Mere kitchen cookbooks usually straddle this point by not specifying either one or the other, but it is generally agreed that cooked steamers make softer eating, as well as being more digestible than quahogs, and New Yorkers mostly prefer a mixture of 2 parts soft clams with 1 part hard clams.

The real fireworks begin over the milk-versus-tomato question. Natives of Massachusetts will not tolerate a touch of tomato in their most sacred dish, and Down Easters are so fanatic on the subject that a bill was introduced in the Maine legislature last year to outlaw forever the mixing of clams and tomatoes. According to New England sentiment everywhere, milk is the mild flavorer and blender to finish off clam chowder. On the other hand, Manhattan Chowder contains no milk, but is rich in that questionable ingredient, the tomato, and besides, if made according to the original Coney Island recipe, it goes farther astray, with a generous sprinkling of caraway seeds. To thicken with flour, or not to thicken; that is a question of personal choice in Massachusetts, as is the manner of using crackers, which may be either broken into the chowder or eaten out of hand. In general, Massachusetts chowder is thicker, with more substance and bigger pieces of clams in it than that of Rhode Island, where clams are cut very fine and the dish turns out comparatively thin. Also some shore recipes call for putting ingredients in in layers, others not. On one point, though, all regional contestants are in accord. If anybody asks how New Jersey Clam Chowder is made they'll join in a horse laugh, for there ain't no such animal-the chowder frontier is definitely the Hudson River. (Yet in New Jersey you'll find an exception that proves the rule-a good modern Jersey chowder made with noodles of all things!)