Chowder is a soup often prepared with milk or cream and thickened with broken crackers, crushed ship biscuit, or a roux. Variations of chowder can be seafood or vegetable. Crackers such as oyster crackers or saltines may accompany chowders as a side item, and cracker pieces may be dropped atop the dish. New England clam chowder is typically made with chopped clams and diced potatoes, in a mixed cream and milk base, often with a small amount of butter. Other common chowders include seafood chowder, which includes fish, clams, and many other types of shellfish; corn chowder, which uses corn instead of clams; a wide variety of fish chowders; and potato chowder, which is often made with cheese. Fish chowder, corn chowder, and clam chowder are especially popular in New England and Atlantic Canada.
Some people include Manhattan clam chowder as a type of chowder, but since it has no milk or cream and is tomato-based, it is actually more like a vegetable soup with clams.
The origin of the term chowder is obscure. One possible source is the French word chaudière, the French word for cauldron, the type of cooking or heating stove on which the first chowders were probably cooked. If true, this would be similar to the origin of casserole, a generic name for a set of main courses originally prepared in a dish called a casserole.Chodier was also a name for a cooking pot in the Creole language of the French Caribbean islands: Crab pas mache, li pas gras; li mache touop, et li tomber nans chodier (if a crab don't walk, he don't get fat, if he walks too much, he falls into a cooking pot). Another possible source of the word "chowder" could be the French dish called chaudrée (sometimes spelled chauderée), which is a type of thick fish soup from the coastal regions of Charente-Maritime and Vendée.
Chowder may refer to:
Chowder is an American animated television series created by C.H. Greenblatt for Cartoon Network. The series follows an aspiring young child named Chowder and his day-to-day adventures as an apprentice in Chef Mung Daal's catering company. Although he means well, Chowder often finds himself in predicaments due to his perpetual appetite and his nature as a scatterbrain. The series is animated with both traditional animation in Toon Boom and Adobe Flash as well as short stop motion and puppet sequences that are inter-cut into the episodes, and that run over the end credits.
Chowder premiered on November 2, 2007, and ran for three seasons with 49 total episodes. It garnered one Primetime Emmy Award win, six Annie Award nominations, and two additional Emmy Award nominations during its run. The series finale, "Chowder Grows Up", aired on August 7, 2010.