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The regional table / New Hampshire

Corn Chowder

Published September 23, 2026 · New Hampshire

A shallow bowl of pale yellow corn chowder, kernels and cubes of potato heaped in the middle, crisp scraps of salt pork and black pepper on top, a stripped corn cob on the board behind
The cobs in the background are the stock. Throwing them away is throwing away the flavour of the dish. AI-generated illustration.
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Every chowder needs something to be made of. On the coast that is clam liquor; inland it is the cobs you were about to throw away.

Corn chowder is the chowder of the places where there were no clams, and the substitution it makes is not corn for seafood — it is corn cob for clam broth. The instruction is in print in Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book, by Mary J. Lincoln, 1884, on page 157, and it is the first thing the recipe says: scrape the raw corn from the cob, boil the cobs twenty minutes in water enough to cover them, then skim them out. What is left is the liquid the chowder is built in. After that it is the same pot as any other chowder on the New England coast — a two-inch cube of fat salt pork, an onion fried in the fat and the fat strained into the kettle, a pint of sliced potatoes, the corn, salt and white pepper, fifteen minutes of simmering, then butter and a pint of milk and crisped crackers. There is no flour in it. There is one oddity worth reporting because it is in both the 1884 and the 1888 printings: the ingredient column carries a pint of sliced tomatoes that the method never mentions again.

Fannie Farmer's version twelve years later, on page 127 of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book of 1896, is the first recipe in her chowder chapter, ahead of the fish and the clam, and it is a winter dish — it opens with one can of corn, and it thickens with eight common crackers split and soaked rather than with flour. That is the honest shape of this chowder's history, and it does not match the story usually told about it. In the New Hampshire newspaper run searched for this article — the Keene papers, digitised by the New Hampshire State Library, which reach back to 1799 — the phrase corn chowder does not occur at all before 1898, while fish chowder is there in 1842 and clam chowder runs to hundreds of mentions in the same decades. The first hit is a church supper reported in the Keene Evening Sentinel of 13 December 1898, at which, the paper notes, there was "fish chowder, clam chowder and corn chowder" on the bill of fare. Keene sits in the southwest corner of the state, about as far from salt water as New Hampshire gets, and it was serving all three. Corn chowder may well be the older thing in the pot; as a name in print it is the latecomer, and the record here says so plainly.

Why this version works

No flour, no roux. Neither 1884 nor 1896 thickens this chowder with flour, and it does not need it. The cob broth is already faintly viscous, the potatoes shed starch into it, and a few kernels crushed against the side of the pot will carry the rest. What you get is a chowder that stays translucent and tastes of corn instead of one that tastes of paste.

The cobs are the stock. A stripped cob is full of starch and sugar and the milky sap the kernels sit in, and twenty minutes of simmering pulls all of it into the water. Skip it and you are making potato soup with corn in it. This is Lincoln's first instruction in 1884 and it is still the single thing that separates a good corn chowder from a dull one.

Milk in last, off the boil. Corn and potato are forgiving; milk is not. Add it at the end, bring the pot only to the point where it steams and one bubble breaks at the edge, and take it off. Boiled milk in a corn chowder curdles into grains exactly as it does in a clam one, and there is no fat or flour here to hold it together.

Salt pork for the fat, kept for the top. The pork is rendered, the onion is cooked in its fat, and in Lincoln's recipe the fat is strained into the kettle and the scraps left behind. Keep the scraps. They go on top of the bowls, where their crunch and salt land on the surface rather than dissolving into the milk, and they are the only seasoning this chowder needs beyond pepper.

Ingredient notes

Corn: eight ears, which gives about four cups of kernels and, more to the point, eight cobs. Scrape the cobs with the back of the knife after cutting the kernels off — the milk that comes out is worth a spoonful of cream. Out of season, use 4 cups of frozen kernels and make the broth with two cobs from the freezer aisle if you have them, or accept a thinner chowder; Farmer's canned corn is the 1896 answer to the same problem.

Milk: three cups of whole milk, and no cream. This is a plain dish and cream buries the corn. If you want it richer, hold back half a cup of milk and finish with the same quantity of cream instead.

Potatoes: a pound and a quarter of Yukon Gold in half-inch dice. Waxy potatoes keep their edges in the broth. A russet dissolves and thickens the pot, which is a way of getting body without flour if you want it, but you lose the look of the thing.

Salt pork: three ounces of unsmoked fat salt pork or fatback, in quarter-inch dice, close to Lincoln's two-inch cube. Bacon will do at a push but its smoke sits on top of sweet corn and flattens it; blanch it two minutes first if it is all you have.

Step by step

  1. Strip the ears, keep the cobs. Stand each ear in a bowl and cut the kernels off, then scrape each cob with the back of the knife to get the milk. You want about 4 cups of kernels. Break the cobs in half.
  2. Make the cob broth. Put the cobs in a heavy 5-quart pot with 5 cups of water, bring to a boil and simmer 20 minutes. Lift the cobs out with tongs, pressing them against the side of the pot, and discard them. You should have about 4 cups of broth.
    Stripped corn cobs simmering in a pot of broth
    Simmer the stripped cobs to make the broth before discarding them. AI-generated illustration.
  3. Render the salt pork. Pour the broth into a bowl and wipe the pot dry. Cook the diced salt pork over medium-low heat 8 to 10 minutes, until the fat has run and the scraps are gold. Lift the scraps out with a slotted spoon onto paper and keep them for the top.
  4. Onion, then potatoes. Cook the onion in the fat 5 minutes over medium heat without letting it colour. Add the potatoes, the bay leaf, the pepper and the cob broth, bring to a simmer and cook 12 to 15 minutes, until a cube gives to a knife.
  5. Corn, and a little crushing. Add the corn and simmer 5 minutes. Crush a ladleful of the potatoes and kernels against the side of the pot with a spoon — that is the whole of the thickening — and pull the bay leaf.
  6. Milk under a boil, then rest. Take the pot off the heat, stir in the milk and the butter, and return it to the lowest heat until it steams, about 180°F. Do not let it boil. Season, let it stand 10 minutes, and serve with the pork scraps, the chives and crackers on top.
If it broke into grains and thin liquid, the milk boiled. Blend a cupful of the chowder with plenty of potato in it until smooth and whisk that back into the pot off the heat; the starch pulls it together well enough to serve. If the fault is the other way and the bowl tastes watery and sweet and of nothing much, the cobs were skipped or hurried — simmer the next batch's cobs the full twenty minutes, and in the meantime save this one with a teaspoon of salt and a hard grind of pepper, which is usually what it is actually missing.

Storage and make-ahead

It keeps 3 days refrigerated and is better on the second day. Reheat it over low heat, stirring, and pull it at the first steam; brought to a boil it breaks just as a fresh one does.

Do not freeze it — the milk separates and the potatoes go grainy. To work ahead, make the cob broth up to two days early and keep it covered in the fridge; it is the part that takes the time and it freezes perfectly on its own.

What to serve with it

Crackers, and a tomato salad if it is August and the corn was picked that morning. In the cold half of the year a wedge of sharp cheddar and brown bread beside the bowl turns it into supper rather than a first course.

A shallow bowl of pale yellow corn chowder, kernels and cubes of potato heaped in the middle, crisp scraps of salt pork and black pepper on top, a stripped corn cob on the board behind

From the recipe box / New Hampshire

Corn Chowder

The stripped cobs boiled for twenty minutes to make the broth, salt pork and onion for the fat, and no flour anywhere — the chowder of the towns that had no clams.

Prep
25 min
Cook
40 min
Total
1 hr 5 min
Serves
6
Calories
350 per serving

Ingredients

Scale

Instructions

  1. Cut the kernels from the 8 ears, scrape the cobs for their milk, and break the cobs in half.
  2. Simmer the cobs in 5 cups water 20 minutes, lift them out and discard them, and set the broth aside; you want about 4 cups.
  3. Render the diced salt pork in the dry pot 8–10 minutes, then lift out the crisp scraps and reserve them.
  4. Cook the onion in the fat 5 minutes without colour, add the potatoes, bay, pepper and cob broth, and simmer 12–15 minutes.
  5. Add the corn, simmer 5 minutes, crush a ladleful against the side of the pot and remove the bay leaf.
  6. Off the heat stir in the milk and butter, warm to about 180°F without boiling, salt to taste, rest 10 minutes and serve topped with the pork scraps, chives and crackers.

Nutrition

Fat17 g (7 g saturated)
Sodium780 mg
Protein11 g
ServingAbout 1½ cups
Calories350
Cholesterol35 mg
Carbohydrates42 g (12 g sugar, 4 g fiber)

Nutrition is an estimate calculated from the listed ingredients and is provided as a courtesy, not as dietary advice.

Questions readers ask

Why is there no cream?

Because there is none in the source and the dish is better without it. Lincoln finishes with a pint of milk and a tablespoon of butter; Farmer with four cups of scalded milk and three tablespoons of butter. This is a supper for a house that kept a cow and grew corn, not a restaurant bisque, and cream flattens exactly the flavour the cobs were boiled to get.

Can I use frozen or canned corn?

Yes, and the 1896 book uses canned without apology — one can of corn is the first line of Farmer's recipe. Four cups of frozen kernels work the same way. What you lose is the cobs, so the broth has to come from somewhere else: a light chicken or vegetable stock, or plain water and an extra potato, with a longer simmer to concentrate it.

Is corn chowder supposed to have bacon in it?

Not in either of the printed versions this recipe comes from. Both render fat salt pork, which is unsmoked. Bacon is the common modern substitution and it changes the dish, because smoke is louder than sweet corn. If you use it, blanch it first and use half as much as you think.

What do I do about the tomatoes in the 1884 recipe?

Nothing, unless you want to. A pint of sliced tomatoes sits in Mrs. Lincoln's ingredient list in both the 1884 and 1888 printings and her method never tells you what to do with them. If you want to find out, add a cup of peeled chopped tomato with the corn and leave the milk out — you get a clear, sharp chowder, and you should not expect the two to live together happily in the same pot.