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Massachusetts Clam Chowder
I QUART SHELLED CLAMS 1/2 CUP DICED SALT PORK I MEDIUM ONION, SLICED 4 CUPS DICED RAW POTATOES 2 CUPS BOILING WATER CLAM LIQUOR 4 CUPS SCALDED MILK SALT AND PEPPER 2 TABLESPOONS BUTTER 2 TABLESPOONS FLOUR CRACKERS Look over clams, removing all grit and shell. Drain and reserve liquor. Separate hard and soft parts of clams, and chop hard parts fine. Start frying pork and, when enough fat has run out, add onion; continue slow frying until onion is tender and golden. Add potatoes and boiling water; bring to boiling point and cook a few minutes. Add clam liquor and hard parts of clams. Simmer until potatoes are done. Add milk, soft parts of clams, salt and pepper, butter, and flour worked smooth with a little water. Boil gently 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand for better flavor. Serve with plain crackers, or add broken crackers to chowder before taking up.
A conventional New England chowder built on salt pork, potatoes and milk, with the clams handled in two stages. The technique still works as written; a few of the ingredient terms need translating.
- A quart of shelled clamsThat is roughly 2 lb of shucked meat, the yield of a good many pounds of hard-shell clams in the shell (quahogs or large cherrystones); shell-to-meat yields vary widely, so treat any conversion as approximate. Shucked clams sold in tubs come with their liquor, which is what the recipe means by "clam liquor"; strain it through a fine sieve or coffee filter to catch sand.
- Hard and soft partsOlder recipes divide a quahog into the tough adductor muscle and rim, which are chopped and simmered, and the soft belly, which is added at the end. The distinction is the hinge of the dish: the soft parts cook in two or three minutes and turn to rubber if held longer.
- Salt porkUnsmoked cured pork belly or fatback. Thick-cut bacon substitutes acceptably but adds smoke the original did not have. Blanch salt pork briefly if it is very salty, and hold back on added salt until the end.
- Scalded milkMilk heated to just below the boil, about 180F, with the surface beginning to steam and the edge trembling. The step is usually explained as a holdover from the days of unpasteurised milk, and it still helps: adding cold milk to a hot pot drops the temperature and slows the finish.
- The flourTwo tablespoons worked smooth with water is a thin slurry, meant to give body rather than thickness. Stir it in with the pot at a gentle simmer and let it cook the full two to three minutes so the raw flour taste goes; chowder should coat a spoon, not stand up on it.
- Letting it standThe instruction is worth following. Twenty minutes off the heat, or several hours in the refrigerator and a gentle reheat, lets the pork and clam flavour move into the potatoes and milk. Do not let it boil on reheating or the milk will break.
- CrackersThe plain crackers intended here are common crackers or oyster crackers, unsalted or nearly so. Saltines work; broken into the pot they dissolve and thicken it further, which is the older habit.
- YieldClose to four quarts by the volume of the ingredients listed, serving eight or so as a main course with bread.
Chowder in New England runs on a fixed order of operations that this recipe follows exactly: render salt pork, soften onion in the fat, cook potatoes in water, then finish with milk. The Massachusetts version is defined as much by what it omits as what it contains; the milk-and-pork style around Boston is usually set against the tomato-based chowder associated with New York, though that rivalry is largely a twentieth-century formulation, and Rhode Island's own chowder is more often clear-broth than tomato. The two-stage handling of the clam is a mark of cooks working with quahogs, the big hard-shell clams that are cheap, abundant and too tough to serve whole; the muscle is chopped and simmered for flavour while the tender belly goes in last. That this appears in an outdoor cooking book is not a stretch, since chowder was long a shore and camp dish, made in a single kettle over a fire with pork and hard bread carried along and the clams dug on the spot.