Clam Chowder
Put fifty clams, with their own liquor, into a graniteware saucepan and when they have come to a boil skim out the clams and return the liquor to the fire. Cut into thin slices six ounces of salt pork, chop one medium sized onion and fry both together until brown. Stir in two tablespoons of flour, and, when the flour is cooked, slowly add the clam liquor. Flavor with one teaspoon salt, one-half teaspoon of white pepper and a saltspoon of thyme. Add three parboiled potatoes which have been cut into small cubes and cook this mixture until the potatoes are tender. Just before serving add a pint of rich milk, the clams cut into pieces and three large pilot biscuit or a larger number of hard water crackers, as preferred. If liked thicker, blend one tablespoon of butter with the same of flour, and add gradually. To make Rhode Island Clam Chowder add tomatoes either canned or fresh.
A late-Victorian New England chowder built on a pork-and-flour roux rather than cream alone. Two things decide whether it succeeds: how briefly the clams meet the heat, and how carefully the liquor is strained.
- The clams go in last, and barely cookThey are opened by the initial boil and then removed, so by the time they return to the pot they are already done. Chopped and stirred in off the boil, they need only a minute or two to heat through; held at a simmer they tighten into erasers.
- Fifty clamsMost likely hard-shell clams (littlenecks or cherrystones); the recipe does not say, and soft-shell clams were also used in New England chowder. Fifty littlenecks run roughly 4 to 5 lb in the shell; a full-grown quahog is far larger, so judge by meat rather than count. Aim for something on the order of a quart of liquor, topped up with water or bottled clam juice if the clams come up short.
- Strain the liquorClams give up sand as they open. Pour the liquor through a fine sieve or a coffee filter and leave the last spoonful behind in the pan, or the chowder will be gritty no matter what else you do.
- GranitewareMottled enamelware over steel or iron. Enamelled pans were routinely called for with delicate or acidic foods, presumably to avoid the discolouring that bare iron or copper can cause; any modern stainless or enamelled pan does the same job.
- A saltspoonAbout 1/4 teaspoon. Salt with a light hand at first — 6 oz of salt pork and the clam liquor are both salty, so hold back the teaspoon of salt until you have tasted the finished pot.
- Pilot biscuitHard, unsweetened ship's crackers. Nabisco's Crown Pilot crackers are no longer made, but New England common crackers are still sold. They soften and thicken the chowder. Oyster crackers or plain saltines work; a handful of unsweetened water biscuits, broken up, is closest.
- Rich milkRoughly whole milk with cream added -- half whole milk, half light cream is a fair reading. Add it warm and keep the pot below a simmer afterward; boiled milk can curdle, and the risk rises if you take the tomato option at the end.
- YieldAbout 2 1/2 quarts, serving six as a main course. It improves after a few hours' standing, though reheat gently and only to steaming.
- The Rhode Island noteThe tomato version described here is close to what is now generally called Manhattan clam chowder. Rhode Island is today best known for a clear chowder with neither milk nor tomato, though tomato versions persist there as well; the regional labels were never fixed.
Chowder came into New England kitchens by way of the Atlantic fishing trade — the name is generally traced to the French chaudière, a cauldron said to have been used by shore crews to cook up whatever the boats brought in, layered with salt pork and hard biscuit. The biscuit is the oldest part of the formula: before flour-thickened chowders became standard in the nineteenth century, crushed ship's bread was the usual thickener, which is why this version keeps the pilot biscuit even though it has already made a roux. The Butterick book, produced by the pattern company for a broad household readership, includes a brisk aside about tomatoes that reflects a period when the milk-versus-tomato quarrel was still live enough that regional labels shifted from book to book.