Chowder

This article is about the soup. For other uses, see Chowder (disambiguation).

Chowders

New England clam chowder
Details
Type	Stew
Main ingredient(s)	Seafood or vegetables, often milk or cream
Variations	New England clam chowder, seafood chowder, corn chowder, potato chowder

Seafood, potato, and corn chowder

Chowder is a seafood or vegetable soup, often served with milk or cream and mostly eaten with saltine crackers. Chowder is usually thickened with broken up crackers, but some varieties are traditionally thickened with crushed ship biscuit. 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. Some people include Manhattan clam chowder; but, since it has no milk or cream and is tomato-based, it may be considered more akin to a vegetable soup with clams.

Etymology

The origin of the term chowder is obscure. One possible source is the French word chaudière, the type of cooking/heating stove on which the first chowders were probably cooked. (This, if true, 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 (and maybe more probable) source could be the French dish called chaudrée (sometimes spelled chauderée), which is a sort of thick fish soup from the coastal regions of Charente-Maritime and Vendée.

Fish chowder, corn chowder, and clam chowder continue to enjoy popularity in New England and Atlantic Canada.

Types

• Clam chowder
• Corn chowder
• Fish chowder
• Southern Illinois chowder
• Bermuda fish chowder
• Seafood chowder

See also

• Cioppino, a fish stew derived from Italian cuisine
• Jeongol, a chowder-like stew in Korean cuisine
• List of fish dishes
• List of seafood dishes
• List of stews

External links

• The New England Chowder Compendium
• A history of Chowder