The regional table / Alaska
Salmon Chowder
Published October 30, 2026 · Alaska
The oldest recipe behind this page was printed by the men who canned the salmon, in a promotional pamphlet from 1900, and it contains two chowders — one of them with tomatoes and milk in the same pot.
The Alaska Packers Association put out a pamphlet called Canned Salmon Recipes around 1900, printed in San Francisco, and it is long out of copyright and openly readable. Its contents page runs from breakfast dishes through luncheon dishes to a section headed "Soups and Chowders", and that section has two of them. The first, Salmon Chowder No. 1, is a tomato chowder: "One-fourth pound corned pork, two large onions; cut these fine and braise in same pot in which the chowder is to be made for about thirty minutes. Add one can tomatoes, one green pepper cut fine and one quart water or bouillon. Let this cook one hour. Add one pound potatoes cut in small pieces; cook twenty minutes and add one can of Salmon, one pint milk or cream and a few broken crackers. Season to taste." It reckons to serve about ten people, and note that it puts tomatoes and milk in the same pot without apology. The second is plainer and more interesting as a method, because it is built in layers rather than stirred: "Three Cans of Salmon, three large potatoes, one large onion, one-half pound salt pork, one pint milk or cream, three ship crackers, salt and pepper to taste." The pork and onion are fried in a little butter until light brown, then "Place alternate layers of potatoes, fish, pork and onion in a large saucepan; dust with salt and pepper", cover with boiling water and simmer twenty minutes. Meanwhile "Scald a pint of milk or cream, take it off the fire and add one and one-half tablespoonfuls of butter and three broken ship crackers". The fish is arranged in a mound, covered with the softened crackers, and the scalded milk poured over the whole. Two details there are worth keeping: the dairy never boils, and the thickening is crackers rather than flour.
The tin itself is a federally defined object and the definition explains the single most useful thing about it. Under 21 CFR 161.170 canned Pacific salmon may be made from six species, each with its legal trade name attached — Oncorhynchus tshawytscha as Chinook, king or spring; O. nerka as blueback, red or sockeye; O. kisutch as coho, medium red or silver; O. gorbuscha as pink; O. keta as chum or keta; O. masou as masou or cherry — which is why a label can say "red salmon" and mean something precise. The food must be "packed in hermetically sealed containers and so processed by heat as to prevent spoilage and soften bones", and the only things that may be added to it are salt and "edible salmon oil comparable in color, viscosity, and flavor to the oil which would occur naturally". The standard also names the forms of pack, among them "Regular", which is transverse steaks filled vertically into the can, and "Skinless and backbone removed" — and that choice matters more than it looks. USDA records canned pink salmon drained of its liquid at 283 milligrams of calcium per hundred grams; the same fish with the skin and bones taken out comes in at 60. The softening clause in the regulation is doing real work, and buying the boneless pack throws away nearly four-fifths of the calcium. As for the lanes this page was planned around: America Eats remains unreachable, as it has been all through this project, and Alaska Sea Grant answers a browser but its search returns nothing on chowder. Nobody cooks for this site; the recipe below keeps the 1900 pamphlet's logic with quantities worked out for this page.
Why this version works
The thickener is crackers, not flour. Neither 1900 recipe contains a roux, and both reach for broken ship crackers or water biscuits instead — the second one softens them in the scalded milk before the milk goes over the fish. That is the older and better way to handle a chowder of this kind: starch from a baked biscuit thickens without the pasty quality a flour-and-butter roux gives, and because you add it at the end you can judge the consistency instead of committing to it at the start. Use plain unsalted crackers or water biscuits, crush them roughly, and add them a handful at a time off the heat.
Buy the pack with the bones in, because the law has already softened them. The standard requires canned salmon to be heat-processed so as to "soften bones", which means the vertebrae in a regular-pack tin crush between finger and thumb and disappear into the chowder entirely. They are also where most of the mineral is: 283 milligrams of calcium per hundred grams for drained pink salmon against 60 for the skinless and boneless pack, by USDA's measurement. Mash them in with the back of a spoon when you break the fish up, along with the soft skin if it is there. Nobody will find a bone and the chowder gets a slightly fuller body from the collagen in the skin. If a tin says "skinless and backbone removed", it is a more expensive and less useful product for this dish.
Salt pork is both the fat and the seasoning, so salt is the last decision. USDA puts raw salt pork at 80.5 grams of fat and 2,680 milligrams of sodium per hundred grams, with only 11 grams of water. A quarter-pound of it renders enough fat to cook the onion and brings something like three thousand milligrams of sodium into the pot before anything else happens — which is exactly why both 1900 recipes say "season to taste" and specify no salt at all. Render it slowly from cold so the fat comes out rather than the dice burning, and keep the crisp pieces to go back in at the end. Bacon stands in acceptably and brings smoke the original does not have.
The dairy goes in off the heat, which is what the 1900 method does and why it does it. The pamphlet scalds the milk in a separate pan, takes it off the fire, and pours it over at the end. That is not fussiness. Milk and cream curdle when they are boiled in a pot that already contains salt and the acid from potato starch and salmon, and a chowder that has broken cannot be brought back. Heat the dairy separately to just below a simmer, pull it, and stir it into the pot once the pot has stopped bubbling. The chowder should then be served without returning it to the boil at any point.
Ingredient notes
The salmon: two 6¾-ounce tins of pink or red salmon, regular pack, bones and skin included — that can size is one of the weights in the standard's fill-of-container table, listed at 191 grams. Pink is the cheaper and milder fish and is what the pamphlet's audience would have had; red, which is sockeye, is firmer, oilier and much more assertive, and makes a chowder you notice. Reserve the liquid from the tins and add it with the water; it is salmon oil and juices and there is no reason to pour it away. Fresh or leftover cooked salmon works and goes in at the same stage, but you lose the bones and the calcium.
The potatoes: a pound and a half of a floury or all-purpose variety, peeled and cut into half-inch dice — russets, Maris Piper, Yukon Golds. Floury is right because you want some of the starch to leave the potato and thicken the broth slightly before the crackers go in. Waxy potatoes hold their shape better and give a thinner chowder. Cut them to an even size and put them in once the liquid is simmering, not before, so they cook evenly from the outside.
The salt pork: four ounces, cut into half-inch dice as the 1900 recipe specifies. Ask for salt pork or streaky belly salt pork at a butcher; failing that, use thick-cut unsmoked bacon, or smoked bacon if you accept that the chowder will taste smoky. Start it in a cold dry pan so the fat renders before the outside colours. Do not substitute oil and salt, which gives you neither the texture of the pork dice nor the gelatine the rind contributes.
The dairy and the crackers: two cups of whole milk, or half milk and half single cream if you want it richer, plus two tablespoons of butter and a good handful of plain unsalted crackers or water biscuits, roughly crushed. The pamphlet allows "one pint milk or cream" without choosing, so either is faithful. Scald the dairy in a separate small pan with the butter and half the crushed crackers in it, exactly as the 1900 recipe does, which softens the crackers and warms the milk in one operation. Keep the rest of the crackers back for the table.
Step by step
- Render the salt pork from cold. Put the diced salt pork into a cold heavy pot and set it over medium-low heat. Let it render slowly for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring now and then, until the dice are golden and crisp and there is a good pool of fat. Lift the crisp pieces out with a slotted spoon and set them aside; leave the fat in the pot.
- Cook the onion in the fat until light brown. Add the diced onion to the pork fat and cook it over medium heat for 8 minutes or so, until soft and just colouring at the edges — the pamphlet says to fry pork and onion "until they are a light brown", and a little colour here is most of the chowder's depth. Add a grind of pepper but no salt.
- Add the potatoes and the liquid and simmer. Tip in the diced potatoes, the reserved liquid from the salmon tins and three cups of water or light stock. Bring to a simmer and cook, uncovered, for about 15 minutes, until the potatoes are tender to a knife and some of them have begun to break up at the edges and cloud the broth slightly. Do not boil hard; the potatoes will fall apart entirely.
- Scald the milk separately with the butter and half the crackers. While the potatoes cook, put the milk, the butter and half the crushed crackers into a small pan and heat it to just below a simmer — steaming, with the surface trembling and no bubbles breaking. Take it off the heat and leave it to stand; the crackers will soften and swell into it.
- Break the salmon in at the end and take the pot off the heat. Tip the drained salmon into the pot in large pieces, including the skin and the softened vertebrae, and break it up gently with the back of a spoon — crush the bones against the side of the pot but do not stir the fish into shreds. Give it 2 minutes to warm through, then take the pot off the heat entirely.
- Pour in the scalded milk, season, and serve without boiling it again. Stir the scalded milk and softened crackers into the pot off the heat, add the reserved crisp pork, and taste for salt — it may well need none. Grind in plenty of black pepper. Let it stand 5 minutes to settle and thicken, and serve hot but never boiled, with the remaining crushed crackers at the table.
A broken, grainy chowder has had its dairy boiled, usually by returning the pot to the heat after the milk went in — there is no mending it, and the rule is that the pot never simmers again once the milk is in. If it is too thin, crush in more crackers off the heat and give it five minutes; they go on thickening as they sit. Too thick is easier: loosen it with hot milk rather than water, which keeps the body. Potatoes that have disintegrated into the broth were boiled rather than simmered or were cut unevenly; the chowder will still taste right and look wrong. If the whole thing is too salty, the salt pork was saltier than average — add a peeled potato, simmer it for ten minutes before the milk stage and discard it, and add no salt at all. And if the salmon has gone to mush, it was stirred rather than broken; put it in last, in large pieces, and leave it alone.
Storage and make-ahead
Chowder keeps 3 days refrigerated and is better on the second day, with one caveat: reheat it gently and never to a boil, for the same reason you did not boil it in the first place. A pan over low heat, stirred, stopping as soon as it steams. It does not freeze well — the potatoes go grainy and the milk separates on thawing — so if you want to make it ahead, make it to the end of the potato stage, refrigerate or freeze that, and do the salmon and the milk on the day.
The dry parts of this are all shelf-stable, which is the point of it and the reason the packers were promoting the dish in 1900: tinned salmon, potatoes, an onion, salt pork and a packet of crackers are a chowder for six people out of a cupboard, with no fresh fish and no stock. That was the pamphlet's whole commercial argument and it still holds. Keep a couple of tins of regular-pack salmon in the house and this is forty minutes away at any time of year.
What to serve with it
Crackers, more of them, and butter — the chowder already contains its own starch so bread is optional, but a hunk of sourdough is never wrong in Alaska. Beyond that keep it sharp: a plate of pickles, pickled beets, a cabbage salad with vinegar. The 1900 pamphlet's other chowder suggests where else this can go, with tomatoes and a green pepper in the pot, so if you want that version, add a tin of tomatoes with the water and accept a thinner, brighter soup.
To drink, cold beer, cider or tea; nothing sweet. If you want wine, something white, dry and sharp enough to cut the salt pork. Afterwards, stewed or fresh berries, which is what Alaska has in quantity, or a plain cake — anything that is not creamy, since there is quite enough dairy in the bowl already.
From the recipe box / Alaska
Salmon Chowder
Salt pork, onion and potatoes under canned salmon, thickened with broken crackers and finished with scalded milk off the heat — the method the Alaska salmon packers printed in their own recipe pamphlet in 1900, with the bones left in because federal law softens them.
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 40 min
- Total
- 1 hr
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 440 per serving
Instructions
- Render the diced salt pork from cold over medium-low heat 8 to 10 minutes; lift out the crisp pieces and leave the fat.
- Cook the onion in the fat about 8 minutes until soft and lightly browned; pepper it but add no salt.
- Add the potatoes, the reserved salmon liquid and the water, and simmer uncovered about 15 minutes until tender and slightly clouding.
- Separately heat the milk with the butter and half the crushed crackers to just below a simmer, then take it off the heat to stand.
- Add the drained salmon in large pieces with its skin and softened bones, break it up gently, warm 2 minutes and take the pot off the heat.
- Stir in the scalded milk and crackers and the reserved pork, taste for salt, stand 5 minutes and serve without boiling again.
Nutrition
| Fat | 26 g (11 g saturated) |
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| Sodium | 860 mg |
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| Protein | 19 g |
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| Serving | about 1½ cups |
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| Calories | 440 |
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| Cholesterol | 80 mg |
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| Carbohydrates | 35 g (4 g sugar, 2 g fiber) |
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Nutrition is an estimate calculated from the listed ingredients and is provided as
a courtesy, not as dietary advice.
Questions readers ask
Tomato or cream?
The packers printed both in the same pamphlet, which is a useful licence. Their Salmon Chowder No. 1 braises pork and onion for half an hour, then adds a tin of tomatoes, a chopped green pepper and a quart of water, cooks it an hour, and finishes with potatoes, salmon, a pint of milk or cream and broken crackers — tomatoes and dairy together, which modern chowder orthodoxy frowns on and which clearly bothered nobody in 1900. The recipe here follows the second, plainer one. If you want the tomato version, add a tin of chopped tomatoes with the water and expect a thinner, brighter and more acidic soup.
Can I use fresh salmon?
You can, and it will be a good soup that is not quite this dish. Add half a pound of fresh salmon, skinned and cut into inch pieces, once the potatoes are tender, and give it three minutes off the boil before the milk goes in — it needs almost no cooking. What you lose is specific: the softened bones and their calcium, the canning liquid, and the slightly firm, faintly mineral quality that tinned salmon gives a chowder and fresh does not. The dish was promoted by a canning company to sell tins, and it is honestly better with them.
Should I really leave the bones in?
Yes, and the regulation is the reason you safely can. 21 CFR 161.170 requires canned Pacific salmon to be heat-processed so as "to prevent spoilage and soften bones", which is why the vertebrae in a regular-pack tin crush under a spoon and vanish into a chowder. They are also where the mineral is: USDA records drained canned pink salmon at 283 milligrams of calcium per hundred grams, and the same fish with skin and bones removed at 60. Mash them in. The only reason to buy a skinless, boneless pack is if someone eating it cannot be persuaded, and it costs more for less.
Why does the milk go in off the heat?
Because it curdles otherwise, and because that is what the 1900 recipe does — it scalds the milk in a separate pan, takes it off the fire, and pours it over the fish at the end. A pot that already holds salt pork, potato starch and salmon will break dairy if it boils, and a broken chowder cannot be rescued. Heat the milk separately to the point where it steams and trembles, pull it off, and stir it in once the pot has stopped bubbling. The same rule governs reheating leftovers: low heat, stop when it steams.