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Baked Chowder
3 raw potatoes, sliced I½ cups boiled fish very thin I 1½ cups boiled fish 3 slices of cooked 2 small onions, sliced thin bacon and bacon fat 1 cup stewed tomatoes Salt and pepper 1 cup water In a buttered baking-dish arrange alternate layers of potatoes, onions, tomatoes, and fish, seasoning each layer with salt and pepper and a little of the bacon crushed fine, and the bacon fat.
Moisten with the water, dredge the top with flour, and bake covered until the potatoes are soft, then uncover and brown.
A layered casserole built from cooked fish and pantry vegetables, closer to a scalloped potato dish than to a soup chowder. The whole thing succeeds or fails on how thin the potatoes are sliced.
- Slice the potatoes very thinThere is only a cup of water and a cup of tomato in the dish, so the potatoes cook mostly in steam. Cut them no thicker than 1/8 inch, ideally on a mandoline, or the top will brown long before the centre is tender.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives no oven setting, only 'bake covered until the potatoes are soft, then uncover and brown.' A moderate oven, around 350F, suits it: covered, expect roughly 45 to 55 minutes for the potatoes to yield to a knife, then 10 to 15 minutes uncovered to brown.
- Cover it properlyThe recipe simply says to bake covered; a fitted lid, if the dish has one, or foil crimped tight over the rim does the job. A loose cover lets the liquid escape and the potatoes stay hard.
- The fishUse about 1 1/2 cups of flaked cooked fish, which is roughly 8 to 10 ounces. Firm white fish, salmon or smoked haddock all work. Because it is already cooked, add it in generous flakes rather than shreds so it does not disappear into the potatoes.
- BaconThree slices of cooked bacon crumbled fine, plus the rendered fat, is the only real seasoning here beyond salt and pepper. Cures vary, so taste before salting the layers.
- Stewed tomatoesCanned stewed tomatoes are still sold; a cup of canned diced tomatoes with their juice will stand in, though stewed tomatoes usually carry added onion, celery and pepper. Drain off nothing: the liquid is part of the cooking medium.
- Dredging the topA light dusting of flour over the surface, about a tablespoon, thickens the liquid that rises and helps the top brown. It is not a crust; do not lay it on thick.
- YieldMade in a dish of about 1 1/2 quarts, this serves three to four as a main course. It reheats well, covered.
Chowder in nineteenth-century America was often a layered dish as much as a liquid one; the older English and New England practice was to build a pot in strata of salt pork, onion, potato, fish and biscuit, then moisten it and let it cook slowly. This baked version moves that structure into the oven and swaps in fish that has already been cooked once. Tomato rather than milk puts this outside the New England pattern.