the.com/clam chowder
Proof that mollusks, cream, and crackers can start regional wars.
means A thick soup built from clams, broth, and (depending on which coast you trust) cream or tomatoes, usually studded with potatoes and onions.
from 'Chowder' likely traces back to the French 'chaudière,' the big cauldron fishermen and sailors cooked in, via fishing communities in France and the Channel Islands who brought both the pot and the stewing habit to the coasts of the New World. 'Clam' is simpler, probably echoing the clamped, shut-tight shape of the shellfish itself. The soup took hold in New England ports, where cream became gospel; Manhattan's tomato-based rebellion came later and is still treated, in Maine, as a punishable heresy.
- boston vs manhattan
- cream versus tomato, a century-old culinary feud
- illegal in maine
- a 1939 bill tried to ban tomatoes in chowder
- name origin
- from chaudiere, the french pot fishermen cooked it in
- oyster crackers
- invented specifically to float, not sink, in chowder