The original ingredients were salt pork, sea biscuit, and either fresh or salt cod, all carefully layered in the pot. These ingredients are standard long-conservation provisions of a fishing ship. Sea biscuits or hardtack, which later developed specific names for different shapes and sizes, such as pilot bread or Cross Crackers, were the forerunner of the crackerâa bread too hard to go stale. Potatoes were added to chowder recipes later. Newfoundland's Fishermen's Brewis is a classic chowder, but with the liquid cooked away. (See page 11.)
BUT PLEASE...
NOWADAYS, ALL TOO FREQUENTLY IT [CHOWDER] COMES TO THE TABLE IN A THIMBLE. YOU MEASURE IT OUT WITH AN EYEDROPPER. YET, IN ITS DAY, A CHOWDER WAS THE CHIEF DISH AT A MEAL. THOUGH IT HAS FALLEN FROM THIS PROUD ESTATE, IT IS NOT, NOT, ONE OF THOSE FINE, THIN FUGITIVE SOUPS THAT YOU DELICATELY TOY WITH IN A GENTEEL LADY'S TEA-ROOM.... AND P.S.âPLEASE DON T SERVE IT IN A CUP.
âcompiled by Harriet Adams, comments by N. M. Halper,
Vittles for the Captain: Cape Cod Sea-Food Recipes,
Provincetown, 1941
ADD WHAT YOU LIKE
Four pounds of fish are enough to make a chowder for four or five people; half a dozen slices of salt pork in the bottom of the pot; hang it high, so that the pork may not burn; take it out when done very high brown; put in a layer of fish, cut in lengthwise slices, then a layer formed of crackers, small or sliced onions, and potatoes sliced as thin as a four pence, mixed with pieces of pork you have fried; then a layer of fish again, and so on. Six crackers are enough. Strew a little salt and pepper over each layer; over the whole pour a bowl-f of flour and water, enough to come up even with the surface of what you have in the pot. A sliced lemon adds to the flavor. A cup of tomato catsup is very excellent. Some people put in beer. A few clams are a pleasant addition. It should be covered so as not to let a particle of steam escape, if possible. Do not open it, except when nearly done, to taste if it be well seasoned.
âLydia Maria Child,
The American Frugal Housewife,
Boston, 1829
In nineteenth-century New England, chowder parties became fashionable. A dozen or more people would go for a morning sail and then prepare the chowder either on board or later, on the beach. Also at this time, adding milk to chowder came into fashion, which meant that a chowder then required more than basic seagoing provisions. (See page 76.)
FISH CHOWDER: A NEW APPROACH
Fannie Merritt Farmer, an enormously influential cookbook writer, believed in extremely precise instructions and popularized the idea of exact measurements for recipes, an illusion of science that has become standard practice and, for more than 100 years, has left household cooks saying, “What went wrong? I followed the recipe.” She was the most famous director of the Boston Cooking School, founded a generation earlier to teach working-class women how to cook “scientifically.” Influenced by this school, freedom of choice has slowly been exorcised from recipes, and experimenting is increasingly discouraged.
Fannie Farmer's chowder recipe differs greatly from previous ones not only in its precise measurements but in that it is not made in one pot and completely abandons the idea of building a chowder in layers. The following recipe is clearly designed with a stove in mind, using several pots and even more than one burner at a time. When stoves replaced hearths, the way people cooked changed.
4 lb. cod or haddock.
6 cups potatoes cut in
¼
inch slices, or
4 cups potatoes cut in
¾
inch cubes.
1 sliced onion.
1½ inch cube fat salt pork.
1 tablespoon salt.
â
teaspoon pepper.
3 tablespoons butter.
4 cups scalded milk.
8 common crackers.
Â
Â
Order the fish skinned, but head and tails left on. Cut off head and tails and remove fish from backbone. Cut fish in two-inch pieces and set aside. Put head, tail and backbone broken in pieces, in stewpan; add two cups cold water and bring slowly to a boiling point; cook twenty minutes. Cut salt pork in small pieces and try out, add onion, and fry five minutes; strain fat into stewpan. Parboil potatoes five minutes in boiling water to cover; drain, and add potatoes to fat; then add two cups boiling water and cook five minutes. Add liquor drained from bones and fish; cover, and simmer ten minutes. Add milk, salt, pepper, butter and crackers, split and soaked in enough cold milk to moisten. Pilot bread is sometimes used in place of common crackers.
âFannie Merritt Farmer,
The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book,
1896
In the French Channel ports, the men who fished Newfoundland were called the Terre-Neuvas. The last of them left from the Breton port of St.-Malo and the Norman port of Fecamp in the 1970s. In the campaign of 1961, the year after the following book was published, 22,000 tons of Grand Banks salt cod were still landed in Fécamp. The original French word for chowder, la
chaudrée,
has vanished, and here, the Marseillaise word is used for the soup.
FÃCAMP BOUILLABAISSE
Preparation: 30 minutes
Ingredients: 500 gr. of salt cod, 750 gr. of potatoes, 100 gr. of onion, a few branches of celery, 1 white of a leek, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 table spoons of tomato paste, 3 table spoons of oil, 1 bouquet garni, salt, pepper, chopped parsley.
Desalinate, poach and drain the salt cod, heat the oil in a pot. Toss in the chopped onion, the leek and the celery, also chopped. Let it cook for ten minutes. Peel the potatoes, cut them in thick rounds and cook them in the above preparation. When the potatoes are almost cooked, add the salt cod. Let it simmer slowly for ten minutes. Serve very hot, sprinkle with chopped parsley. Optional: add a little crème fraîche at the time of serving.
This recipe won the
prix Terre-Neuve.
âCommittee for Study and Information for the
Development of Salt Cod Consumption,
Salt Cod: The Fish, Its Preparation, Its Nutritional,
Culinary, and Economic Qualities,
Paris, 1960
WEST AFRICA: STOCKFISH AND EGUZI
The slave trade left West Africa with a taste for cured cod, though to most West Africans, all that remains is a tradition of salting and drying local fish. Some West African towns, such as Kaolack, Senegal, offer a sight that has vanished from Gloucester and Petty Harbourâa shore covered with miles of fish flakes. Kaolack is inland but near the coast on the Saloum River and serves as a jumping-off spot for the headwaters of the Niger, a major artery of regional trade which moves this saltfish through the sub-Sahara and Sahara. But Nigeria has hard currency from oil and can import cod. Nigerians, especially Ibos, love dried cod, which they too call stockfish. This recipe comes from an Ibo who was born in the town of Bende near the Delta, and who now lives in the United States.
Wash the.stockfish in hot water and soak it five minutes. Then boil it for several hours until it is soft. Then add goat meat. When the goat meat is cooked add
eguzi
[seeds of the green squash known in Nigeria as melon]. Add onions and minced ukazi [an herbal leaf]. Add crayfish. Then stir in ugbo [a thickener made from ground seeds, which have been cooked for hours until
soft].
âJoy Okori, Washington, D.C., 1997
BRAZIL: BACALHUA COM LEITE DE COCO
1 pound saltcod
1 freshly-grated coconut
4 tablespoons butter or oil
2 chopped onions
2 chopped tomatoes
2 or 3 drops hot pepper sauce
1 tablespoon dendê oil [a palm oil from Bahia]
Desalinate salt cod. Remove thick milk from coconut and reserve. To the residue add 2 cups hot water and remove thinned milk by pressing through a sieve. Fry saltcod in butter or oil with the onions and tomatoes and wet with the thin milk of the coconut. Cook over a low flame, occasionally stirring. When ready to serve, shake the pepper sauce on the fish, add the dendê oil and the thick coconut milk.
âRosa Maria,
A Arte de Comer Bem, Rio de Janeiro,
1985
Today, “Run Down” is usually prepared with dark, oily, local fish. But the old-fashioned way was with salt cod. Alphanso McLean makes it for friends, though it is considered “too country” to be served at his place of business.
Grate coconut and let it sit in water. Force it through a strainer. Boil the strained liquid and keep stirring until oil comes to top. Add saltfish, onions, tomato and serve with yellow yam and green banana.
âAlphanso McLean, chef, Terra Nova Hotel, Kingston, 1996
Jamaica: ACKEE AND SALTFISH
ELENA RASHLY ASKED VIOLET TO GIVE US A NATIVE DISH. SHE PRODUCED WHAT IS CALLED “SALTFISH AND ACKEE”âWHICH I AFTERWARDS FOUND DESCRIBED AS A DISH HIGHLY ESTEEMED BY THE NATIVES BUT LESS BY OTHER PEOPLE.
âEdmund Wilson, The Sixties, 1993
It seems that much of Wilson's grumpiness on the subject stems from the fact that he got ackee poisoning. “I don't remember ever suffering in such a peculiar way as this,” he wrote. Ackee is a West African fruit brought to Jamaica in 1793 by the infamous Captain Bligh, for whom it is named in botany â
Blighia
sapida. Like its namesake, ackee requires careful handling. The fruit, which hangs flame red from trees in the mountainous Jamaican countryside, must be fully ripeâthat is, bursting openâto be safe.
Ackee and Saltfish is regarded by Jamaicans as their national dish, but the saltfish is now so expensive that Jamaicans joke that it is their “international dish”âonly the tourists can afford it. Terra Nova Hotel chef Alphanso McLean serves Jamaican breakfast (Ackee and Saltfish with fried biscuits) on the wide and breezy hotel veranda, not so much to tourists, who seldom go to Kingston, as to affluent Jamaican businessmen and politicians. The fried biscuits are called johnnycakes and are the same biscuits served for breakfast with Jamaican molasses in the other Terranova, Newfoundland. Originally from southeastern New England, they were made from cornmeal and molasses, baked with pork dripping, and called jonny cakes, the name coming from “journey cakes” because they were taken on the road. They have followed the molasses-and-salt-cod route.
Caribbean saltfish dishes always involve shredding the fish, because it is of low quality. The saltfish, barely soaked, is hard and salty. The dishes depend on this for flavor.
Soak ¼ pound salt cod for 20 minutes. Boil it for 10 minutes. Boil fruit from 1 dozen fresh ackee 5 minutes. Heat vegetable oil in a skillet. In the countryside we always used coconut oil, but here I use soy. Add chopped onions, scallion, thyme, and ground black pepper. That ground pepper gives it a nice flavor. Then add minced pepper [hot scotch bonnet pepper]. Add ackee and crumbled saltfish.
âAlphanso McLean, Terra Nova Hotel, Kingston
In San Juan, Puerto Rico, La Casita Blanca is just thatâa one-story white building, a neighborhood bar built in 1922, which Jesus Perez took over in 1985. It is in Barrio Obrero, a neighborhood that many people do not want to go to after dark. But with its low one- and two-story houses in turquoise and salmon it is also one of the old areas of San Juan not yet overtaken by high-rise architecture.
Perez remembers that his family always made bacalao with roots, yams, breadfruit, yucca. “They ate it like this much more than with rice. My mother always bought whole fish hard and flat. Now I buy fillets. They are soft. They're salted but not dried.” Drying makes the product more expensive, and since refrigeration is now widespread on the island, Puerto Ricans, and many other people throughout the developed world, cut costs by buying green cod. One salt cod dish from his childhood that has remained popular is
Serenata.
In St. Lucia this is called
Brule
Jol; in Trinidad Buljol; in Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Martinique
Chiquetaille,
2 cups salt cod, desalinated, cleaned,
shredded, and boiled
1 large onion, sliced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 hot green peppers
½ cup stuffed olives
4 hardboiled eggs, sliced
2 boiled potatoes, peeled and diced
1 cup olive oil
Mix it well and serve with salt and pepper to taste.
âJesus Perez, La Casita Blanca, San Juan, 1996
Â
Also see page 91.
GUADELOUPE: FEROCE
Carmelite Martial, when asked what her favorite saltfish dish was, replied, “Well, since I don't really like saltfish, maybe a little feroce. I like avocados.”
Mix avocado, kassav (cassava flour), grilled salt cod, a little hot pepper, and sunflower seed oil. Work them together with a spatula. Some people add cucumber, but it is not essential.
âCarmelite Martial, Le Table Creole, St. Felix, Guadeloupe
TE CONOZCO, BACALAO
AUNQUE VENGAS DESFRAZAO
(I would know you, salt cod
Even if you were wearing a disguise)
âCuban proverb
Since at least the time of Taillevent, salt cod has always been embellished with richness because it is harsh. Butter, olive oil, cream have been usedâIcelanders pour the rendered fat of lamb kidneys over it. In 1654, Louis de Bechamel, marquis de Nointel, financier in the court of Louis XIV, having invested huge sums in the Newfoundland fishery, and finding the market weak in France because Frenchmen did not like this dried and salted old fish, invented a sauce for it, which is now called bechamel sauce. The. sauce enjoyed tremendous popularity with salt cod and many other dishes. Originally it was a simple cream sauce with spices such as nutmeg. Later it was enriched with eggs: