This article is about the soup or stew. Chowder is a thick soup prepared with milk or pea soup campbell’s, a roux, and seafood or vegetables. The origin of the term chowder is obscure. One possible source is the French word chaudron, the French word for cauldron, the type of cooking or heating stove on which the first chowders were probably cooked.

Although in the sixteenth century in Cornwall and Devon a dialect word “jowter” was used to describe hawkers, particularly fish-sellers, with later variants “chowder” and “chowter”, this is not cited by the Oxford English Dictionary as a possible source due to controversy regarding the origins of the dish itself. Tobias Smollett has one character state, “My head sings and simmers like a pot of chowder”. In Merriam-Webster’s dictionary chowder is defined as “a thick soup or stew made of seafood or corn with potatoes and onions and milk or tomatoes”. Chowder as it is known today originated as a shipboard dish, and was thickened with the use of hardtack. In 1890, in the magazine American Notes and Queries, it was said that the dish was of French origin.

Among French settlers in Canada it was a custom to stew clams and fish laid in courses with bacon, sea biscuits, and other ingredients in a bucket called a “chaudière”, and it thus came to be invented. Then the Native Americans adopted it as “chawder”, which was then evolved into “chowder” in America. In the United States, early chowder making is traced to New England. In most cases, particularly in the Maritime Provinces, Canadian chowder is thinner and more seafood-forward than its creamier American counterparts. Chowder is a soup with cream or milk mixed with ingredients such as potatoes, sweet corn, smoked haddock, clams and prawns, etc. Some cream-style chowders do not use cream, and are instead prepared using milk and a roux to thicken them. Clam chowder is prepared with clams, diced potato, onion, and sometimes celery.

It may be prepared as a cream-style or broth-style soup. Clam chowder may be prepared with fresh, steamed clams or canned clams. In the late 1800s clam chowder was introduced in New Zealand as an “American” dish and has become integral to New Zealand cuisine. A variant of New Zealand clam chowder is “pipi chowder”, also known as “pipi soup” made with New Zealand surf clams. Corn chowder is similar in consistency to New England clam chowder, with corn being used instead of clams.

Additional vegetables that may be used in its preparation include potatoes, celery and onion. Some are prepared using meats, such as chicken or bacon. Fish chowder is prepared with fish such as salmon or cod, and is similar to clam chowder in ingredients and texture. Ingredients used in fish chowder may include potato, onion, celery, carrot, corn and bacon.