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Chowder
According to the food historians, the word chowder "and
its application to fisherman's stew comes from France. Versions
of la chaudree, (cauldron) are common along the coast from just
north of Bordeaux well up to Brittany...Mrs. Glasse [Hannah Glasse,
18th century English cookbook] gives a recipe To Make Chouder,
A Sea Dish: cod, pickled pork, onions, [sea] biscuit, and water."
---Historical notes by Karen Hesse, Mary Randolph's The Virginia
House-wife [University of U South Carolina Press:Columbia] 1984
(pages 265-6).
"Chowder.
A seafood soup associated with New England, the
most popular of which is clam chowder. The term may also describe
a buttery, hearty soup made with corn, chicken, or other chunks
of food still evident in the blend. The origins of the word "chowder" are
somewhat obscure, but most authories, including the Dictionary
of American Regional English, believes it derives from the French
word for a large caldron, chaudiere, in which Breton sailors
threw their catch to make a communal stew, a custom carried to
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and down to New England in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries...The first American cookbook to give
a chowder recipe was the second edition of Amelia Simmons's American
Cookery (1800). It called for bass, salt pork crackers, and a
side dish of potatoes...Although by 1836 "clam chowder" was
known in Boston, where its associations are still strong, throughout
the century chowder was less commonly a dish of clams than of
fish, usually cod or haddock, and by the 1840s potatoes had become
a traditional ingredient...Chowder was a staple dish of New Englanders,
and for sailors merely another another way to make a constant
diet of fish palatable...By the end of the century certain New
England regions became known for their various interpretations
of chowder--one might find cream in one spot, lobsters in others,
no potatoes elsewhere--but most were by then a creamy white soup
brimming with chopped fish or clams, crackers, and butter..."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New
York] 1999 (p. 81-82)
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