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[1] Creamy New England clam chowder. Here’s a recipe (photo © Mackenzie Ltd).
[2] Manhattan clam chowder has a tomato base (photo © Masterchef | Pinterest).
[3] Rhode Island clam chowder. Here’s a recipe (photo © New York Times).
[4] Vegetable chowder in a bread bowl (photo © Taste Of Home).
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We’re happy as a clam that today, February 25th, is National Clam Chowder Day. (Although as our colleague Philip has always asked, why is a clam so happy? It sits immobile on the ocean floor, waiting to be scooped up for someone’s dinner.)
You can celebrate with New England Clam Chowder (sometimes called Boston Clam Chowder), Manhattan Clam Chowder or Rhode Island Clam Chowder.
Restaurants tend to serve one type or the other. New England Clam Chowder is the oldest version.
According to the book 50 Chowders by Jasper White, the oldest-known printed chowder recipe is for fish chowder, printed in the Boston Evening Post on September 23, 1751.
It calls for onions, pork, salt, pepper, parsley, sweet marjoram, savory, thyme and a biscuit (later replaced by oyster crackers or saltines served with the soup)—ingredients that are still used today.
Below, you’ll find:
> What’s a chowder?
> The three types of clam chowder.
> The difference between seafood, fish, and shellfish.
Elsewhere on The Nibble:
> Recipe for New England Clam Chowder.
> The different types of soup: broth, chowder, consommé, and more.
> The year’s 5 clam holidays.
> The year’s 60+ fish and seafood holidays.
> The year’s 18+ soup and stew holidays.
> The different types of soup: a photo glossary.
> The different types of fish and seafood: a photo glossary.
> The history of chowder.
> The history of soup.
WHAT’S A CHOWDER?
All chowders tend to be made with potatoes, onions, and of course, clams. If you have a shellfish allergy, you can opt for Fish Chowder, which substitutes shredded fish, often cod, for the clams, and throws in corn kernels for good measure.
The word chowder has its roots in the Latin word calderia, which originally meant a hearth for warming things and later came to mean a cooking pot. The word evolved to cauldron, which in French became chaudiere, a heartbeat from chowder.
The first chowders in our culture were fish chowders, made in cauldrons in fishing villages along the coast of France and in the Cornwall region of Southwestern England. When the fishermen came to the New World, they found clams in huge supply along the northern Atlantic coast, and clam chowder was born.
Here’s a review of one of our favorite New England Clam Chowders, available by the can from Bar Harbor Foods.
TYPES OF CLAM CHOWDER
There are other chowders, like corn chowder, fish chowder, lobster chowder, even tofu chowder. But today, it’s all about clam chowder.
New England Clam Chowder. If you like creamy soups, the New England style may be more of your cup of soup. It’s milk- or cream-based (with flour as a thickener), and splattering it is unlikely to permanently ruin that shirt or tie.
Manhattan Clam Chowder. If you want to save calories or cut back on cholesterol, Manhattan Clam Chowder is based on broth and tomatoes. It is actually an Italian clam soup, arriving on these shores with Italian immigrants in the late 1800s. It tends to be seasoned with oregano, from its Italian heritage. The original Italian soup achieved broader appeal with the name of New York Clam Chowder, which evolved to Manhattan Clam Chowder.
Rhode Island Clam Chowder. This variation, found chiefly in Rhode Island, is made with clear broth.
Other Chowder Types: chicken, fish and shellfish (halibut, lobster, shrimp), tofu, vegetable.
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THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SEAFOOD, FISH & SHELLFISH
All fish and shellfish are seafood, but not all seafood is fish or shellfish.
Seafood is the broad category, referring to any form of sea life eaten by humans. It is divided into two sub-categories, fish and shellfish.
Shellfish include:
Molluscs: bivalve molluscs such as clams, mussels, and oysters; and cephalopods. such as octopus and squid.
Crustaceans: hard shells, no backbone, e.g. shrimp, crabs, and lobster.
Echinoderms: e.g. sea cucumbers and sea urchins.
Fish are aquatic animals that swim. live in fresh or saltwater environments. They have a backbone (i.e. vertebrates), gills, scales, and fins.
Common examples include bass, cod, halibut, salmon, snapper, trout, and tuna.
Plant-based seafood:
“Sea vegetables” is a culinary term that includes seaweed but also encompasses halophytes, which are salt-tolerant flowering succulent plants that grow in or near saltwater. These are true plants with roots, stems, and leaves that have evolved to thrive in saline environments.
Seaweeds are algae, specifically macroalgae—primitive organisms that lack true roots, stems, and leaves. They grow submerged in the ocean or attached to rocks.
Examples include:
Halophites: Sea asparagus a.k.a. glasswort or samphire looks like tiny green bean (crunchy, salty snap) that grows in salty environments like salt marshes, beaches, and mangroves, ; sea beet, the wild ancestor of common beetroot, chard, and sugar beets, that tastes like a saltier, more robust version of spinach; sea kale, a hardy, coastal plant related to cabbage; sea fennel a.k.a. rock samphire), a strong, aromatic flavor reminiscent of fennel or parsley with a salty, citrusy kick that grows on sea cliffs (and was mentioned by Shakespeare in “King Lear”; sea purslane, incredibly salty and crunchy, often used raw in salads or as a garnish for fish; and the oyster plant, a.k.a. sea lungwort, the leaves of which taste remarkably similar to fresh oysters.
Seaweed: brown algae (hijiki, kelp, kombu, wakame); green algae aonori, typically dried and powdered as as a garnish; sea grapes/umi-budoo/green caviar, small beads that pop with a liquid inside; sea lettuce/ulva; eaten raw in salads or dried into flakes; red algae (agar-agar, dulse, Irish moss, nori).
[ ] Corn and potato chowder. Here’s the recipe (photo © McCormick).
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