Text 21211, 104 rader
Skriven 2007-10-09 23:16:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av DAVE DRUM
Ärende: Re: Chowdah 1
=====================
-=> Quoting Dave Drum to Jim Weller <=-

 JW> I can just bet, even though I can't prove it, that
 JW>Manhattan clam chowder was named by an Italian immigrant cook in New
 JW>York City, a guy who knew cioppino and was trading on the fame of
 JW>New England clam chowder.

 DD> I wish there was some way to prove that one way or the other. 'Cause
 DD> I'd  take that bet in a Sarasota Second. 

I won't take that bet after all. I now know that cioppino is a San
Francisco invention. I've been looking around the web for the real
history and kept hitting unsubstantiated stories and outright urban
legends but I think I finally found the answer:

From: http://query.nytimes.com
January 24, 1990 DE GUSTIBUS;
Now It Can Be Told: The Dark Tale of Red Clam Chowder By MOLLY O'NEILL

ON Dec. 25, 1978, Austin Phelps Winters sat down at his typewriter
to set about straightening out the facts as they pertained to his
grandfather William H. Winters and Manhattan clam chowder.

It was a difficult moment for Mr. Winters, who was born in New York
City in 1906. How do you tell your children they are progenies of
the self-proclaimed inventor of Manhattan clam chowder?

Mr. Winters believed that his grandfather's was a heinous act. And
for generations, public opinion concurred. Tomatoes were an anathema
to chowder. Chowder, from ''chaudiere,'' the French word for a
caldron, certainly implied cream. According to John Mariani's
''Dictionary of American Food & Drink'' (Ticknor & Fields, 1983),
Breton seamen who sailed to Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New
England in the 17th and 18th centuries invented the dish. If French
sailors were minding the pot, there is no doubt that it contained
cream. 

By the late 18th century, chowder was a staple of the Eastern
seaboard. Mr. Mariani said Rhode Island (Portuguese) cooks began
adding tomatoes to their chowder, ''a practice,'' he wrote, ''that
brought unremitting scorn from chowder fanciers in Massachusetts and
Maine. The public, he concluded, decided that only people who lived
in New York were crazy enough to add tomatoes to chowder and named
the dish accordingly.

Richard J. Hooker, who wrote ''The Book of Chowder'' (Harvard Common
Press, 1978), found contradictory evidence in recipes. Manhattan
clam chowder, he wrote, ''may have descended from the chowders
served during the late 19th century at Coney Island stands.'' In
1894 Charles Ranhofer, famed chef of Delmonico's Restaurant,
published a tomato-based clam soup called Chowder de Lucines in his
book, ''The Epicurean'' (Ranhofer, 1908). 

Nevertheless, Manhattan clam chowder remained ''a notable heresy.''
In 1939 a Maine legislator introduced a bill outlawing the use of
tomatoes in chowder but was unsuccessful in getting it passed. In
1940 Eleanor Early lambasted the ''terrible pink mixture'' in her
book, ''New England Sampler'' (Waverly House). Manhattan clam
chowder, she wrote, ''is only a vegetable soup, and not to be
confused with New England clam chowder, nor spoken of in the same
breath. Tomatoes and clams, have no more affinity than ice cream and
horseradish.''

No wonder cooks didn't rush to claim the invention. The culinary
variation reverberated like an act of sabotage against the New
England clam chowder tradition. As he sat at his typewriter, Mr.
Winters suffered the stigma of the claim he was about to reveal.
''Dear Girls,'' he typed: 

''Papa's father, William H. Winters, was born in East Marion, Long
Island, and had one bachelor brother, James. After the Civil War, in
which he was a blockade runner, he was run out of town (I was told
by an old old lady from East Marion) and he and his brother went to
Brooklyn and opened a fish store on Fulton Street. After the
Brooklyn Bridge was built they moved across to Manhattan, but kept
the name, Fulton Fish Market, which became a fairly big operation,
including running clambakes for political clubs, like Tammany Hall. 

''Clam chowder used always to be made with milk, but they decided
that was too expensive, so they started substituting tomatoes and
called it Manhattan clam chowder,'' he typed. 

Long before contemporary health concerns and regional chauvinism
bestowed a chic on the dish, William Winters bragged about his
invention. He told his grandson he and his brother made the vats of
Manhattan clam chowder that were served on the vote-buying cruises
that Tammany Hall sponsored. ''He was proud of it!'' recalled his
grandson with horror in a recent telephone interview. ''I can't
stand the tomato stuff!'' 

In the letter, which Austin Winters's daughters donated to the
archives at the South Street Seaport Museum, he laments, ''Isn't it
awful, to be the grandson of the inventor and not liking it at
all.'' 


Cheers

YK Jim


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