🌿Notes on New England Chowder

by Clara Silverstein

A New England Staple

There are few foods as deeply woven into New England life as chowder. It’s the kind of dish that feels both practical and comforting. It can feed a crowd or simply warm your hands on a cold night. Long before that though, chowder was a survival food, shaped by sailors, settlers, and shifting tastes over generations. Its story is one of adaptation, opinionated loyalties, and New England tradition.

And every bowl carries a little piece of that history forward.

Chowder Before Clams

Chowder has sustained New Englanders since at least the 1730s, but it didn’t always contain clams. Early chowder recipes often called for cod or other white fish, as clams were not a regular part of the English diet in colonial days. Puritans who settled the Plymouth Colony in the 1620s fed clams to their hogs and called them “the meanest of God’s blessings.” But tastes changed, and by the 1830s, clam chowder began showing up in New England cookbooks.

Traditional Chowder Ingredients

Traditional New England style chowders start with salt pork – meat cured with salt. Sailors often used salt pork because it required no refrigeration. Other typical ingredients in chowder include onions, potatoes, fish or clams, and milk or cream.

Regional Variations and Strong Opinions

Most of us know that clam chowder has regional variations. In the Boston area and in northern New England, we insist on keeping our clam chowder creamy and white as the winter snow. Native Americans in coastal New England sometimes made a chowder with clear broth and quahogs (hardshell clams). Clear chowder can still be found in Rhode Island. But Rhode Islanders were also the first to introduce tomatoes to chowder, a trend that migrated down the East Coast with the result named Manhattan clam chowder.

For New Englanders, this type of chowder is about as popular as the New York Yankees. Eleanor Early, a 1940s cookbook author, called the Manhattan version a “terrible pink mixture” and said “tomatoes and clams have no more affinity than ice cream and horse radish.”

Corn Chowder Joins the Table

The addition of corn to chowder proved more popular. In 1896, Fannie Farmer, who ran a cooking school in Boston, published a chowder recipe that called for corn instead of seafood. Now corn chowder – which sometimes also contains seafood – can be found at restaurants around New England, especially in the summer, when fresh corn is available.

Crackers on Top

Chowder wouldn’t be complete without crackers on top. Originally, sailors put hard tack (hard, dry biscuits with a long shelf life) into their chowder to soften the hard tack and thicken the soup. At home, New Englanders crumbled common crackers –puffy round crackers with a hollow middle – into their chowder. Oyster crackers were developed in the 1840s in Trenton, New Jersey, to accompany oyster stew. The crackers were prized because they could float in the hot stew without dissolving and soon became a must for chowder, too.

Making Chowder at Home

If you want to make your own chowder, it may be difficult to find salt pork at a supermarket, so you could substitute pancetta or bacon (which has a stronger, smokier flavor) in a recipe. Whether you add fish, clams, or corn, you can serve the chowder year round. It will keep you warm in the winter and remind you of the beach in the summer.

Chowder, Stories, and Shared Tables

At Therapy Gardens, we believe food is more than nourishment — it’s memory, history, and connection. Our soup and food history programs invite participants to explore the stories behind familiar dishes, the people who shaped them, and the simple pleasures of gathering around a shared table. Whether you’re curious about New England food traditions or looking for a warm, engaging group experience, we’d love to help you bring these stories to life.

Head to our Contact page — we’d love to hear from you.