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Chowder
Mrs. P. B. Ayer.
Five pounds of codfish cut in squares; fry plenty of salt pork cut in thin slices; put a layer of pork in your kettle, then one of fish; one of potatoes in thick slices, and one of onions in slices; plenty of pepper and salt; repeat as long as your materials last, and finish with a layer of Boston crackers or crusts of bread. Water sufficient to cook with, or milk if you prefer. Cook one-half hour and turn over on your platter, disturbing as little as possible. Clams and eels the same way.
This is a layered chowder in the older sense — closer to a skillet-and-kettle casserole than a soup, turned out whole onto a platter rather than ladled. The liquid is deliberately scant, and that is the point.
- The hinge: barely cover"Water sufficient to cook with" means just enough to come up level with the top layer of solids, not to float them. Too much and you get fish soup, and the stack collapses when you invert it.
- Render the pork first"Fry plenty of salt pork" means cook the slices until the fat runs and the edges crisp; that fat is the only cooking fat in the dish. The recipe gives no weight, only "plenty," so judge by the size of your kettle. If your salt pork is very salty, hold back on the added salt until you taste at the end.
- If you use milkKeep it at a bare simmer. Milk held at a rolling boil with salt pork and salt-seasoned fish will curdle, and cod releases enough salt to make that likely. Whole milk behaves better than skim.
- Boston crackersThese were large, hard, plain round crackers of the common-cracker type, similar in character to ship's biscuit. Common saltines or plain water crackers stand in; the crusts of bread named as an alternative work just as well.
- Cut sizes matter more than the clockHalf an hour cooks the fish generously, so the potatoes need to be thin enough to be done in the same time; read the recipe's "thick slices" as substantial but not chunks, or you will overcook the cod waiting for them.
- Cod quantityThe recipe does not say whether the five pounds is on the bone or already trimmed; skinless loin will go further. Thick centre-cut pieces hold their shape in squares rather than flaking apart during the inversion.
- Turning it outLoosen the edges with a thin spatula, set a large warmed platter over the kettle and invert in one motion. A wide, shallow pot with sloping sides is far easier than a deep stockpot.
- YieldGenerous servings for eight to ten as a main course, with bread.
- Clams and eelsThe recipe says to treat them "the same way," layered from the start; but clams need only minutes and toughen with long cooking, so you may prefer to add them near the end. Eel, if you can find it, is best skinned and cut in short lengths.
Chowder in nineteenth-century New England cookery was less a soup than a method: pork fat, fish, potatoes, onions and hard bread built up in a kettle in alternating layers, with only enough liquid to steam the whole thing through. The word is generally traced to the French chaudière, the cauldron of the fishing coasts, though the connection is traditional rather than documented; what is certain is that the dish belonged to places where salt pork, ship's biscuit and cheap cod were all constantly at hand. The instruction to "turn over on your platter, disturbing as little as possible" marks this as the older, drier form, distinct from the milk-thickened soup that also circulated in the nineteenth century and came to dominate American cookbooks. The Home Cook Book, which appeared in several editions from the mid-1870s, was compiled from contributions by named Chicago and eastern housewives — which is why the quantities are given in pounds of fish and "plenty" of pork, and the liquid is left to the cook's judgment.