Clam chowder

Clam chowder is any of several chowder soups containing clams and broth. In addition to clams, common ingredients include diced potatoes, onions, and celery. Other vegetables are not typically used, but small carrot strips and a garnish of parsley might occasionally be added primarily for color. A garnish of bay leaves also adds color, along with flavor. It is believed that clams were used in chowder because of the relative ease of harvesting them.

Primary variants and styles

New England clam chowder

New England clam chowder is a milk or cream-based chowder, and is traditionally of a thicker consistency than other regional styles, commonly made with potatoes, onion, and clams. Including tomatoes is shunned; a 1939 bill making tomatoes in clam chowder illegal was introduced in the Maine legislature. It is occasionally referred to as Boston Clam Chowder in the Midwest.

New England clam chowder is usually accompanied with oyster crackers. Crown Pilot Crackers were a popular brand of cracker to accompany chowder, until the product was discontinued in 2008. Crackers may be crushed and mixed into the soup for thickener, or used as a garnish.

New England

New England is a region which comprises six states of the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by New York to the west, Long Island Sound to the south, the Atlantic Ocean and the Canadian province of New Brunswick to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north.

In one of the earliest English settlements in North America, Pilgrims from England first settled in New England in 1620, forming the Plymouth Colony. Ten years later, the Puritans settled north of Plymouth Colony in Boston, thus forming Massachusetts Bay Colony. Over the next 126 years, New England fought in four French and Indian Wars, until the British and their Iroquois Confederacy allies defeated the French and their Algonquin allies in North America.

In the late 18th century, the New England Colonies initiated the resistance to the British Parliament's efforts to impose new taxes without the consent of the colonists. The Boston Tea Party was a protest to which Great Britain responded with a series of punitive laws stripping Massachusetts of self-government, which were termed the "Intolerable Acts" by the colonists. The confrontation led to open warfare in 1775, the expulsion of the British authorities from New England in spring 1776, and the Declaration of Independence in July 1776.

Chowder

Chowder is a soup often prepared with milk or cream and thickened with broken crackers, crushed ship biscuit, or a roux. Variations of chowder can be seafood or vegetable. Crackers such as oyster crackers or saltines may accompany chowders as a side item, and cracker pieces may be dropped atop the dish. New England clam chowder is typically made with chopped clams and diced potatoes, in a mixed cream and milk base, often with a small amount of butter. Other common chowders include seafood chowder, which includes fish, clams, and many other types of shellfish; corn chowder, which uses corn instead of clams; a wide variety of fish chowders; and potato chowder, which is often made with cheese. Fish chowder, corn chowder, and clam chowder are especially popular in New England and Atlantic Canada.

Some people include Manhattan clam chowder as a type of chowder, but since it has no milk or cream and is tomato-based, it is actually more like a vegetable soup with clams.

Etymology

The origin of the term chowder is obscure. One possible source is the French word chaudière, the French word for cauldron, the type of cooking or heating stove on which the first chowders were probably cooked. If true, this would be similar to the origin of casserole, a generic name for a set of main courses originally prepared in a dish called a casserole.Chodier was also a name for a cooking pot in the Creole language of the French Caribbean islands: Crab pas mache, li pas gras; li mache touop, et li tomber nans chodier (if a crab don't walk, he don't get fat, if he walks too much, he falls into a cooking pot). Another possible source of the word "chowder" could be the French dish called chaudrée (sometimes spelled chauderée), which is a type of thick fish soup from the coastal regions of Charente-Maritime and Vendée.