The Words We Use

This column often gets letters from schoolboys and schoolgirls requesting information about words connected with school projects; one came the other day from Mary O'Callaghan ofCork city, who has an interest in cookery. She wants to know where the word chowder - a thick soup of fish simmered with diced potatoes (usually potatoes) and bits of crispy bacon - came from.

The word is from the French chaudiere, a pot, and it seems that chowder was first made in the fishing villages of Brittany. According to a writer in the 1870 series of the learned journal, Notes and Queries, faire la chaudiere means "to supply a cauldron in which was cooked a mess of fish and biscuit with some savoury condiments, a hodge-podge contributed by the fishermen themselves, each of whom in return receives his share of the prepared dish". The Breton fishermen, who, like those from Wexford and Waterford, fished for cod on the banks of Newfoundland, brought their dish with them, whence it spread to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and New England. Another writer in Notes and Queries says he frequently heard some of the old inhabitants of Newfoundland speak of "Commodore John Eliot's chowder pic-nic in honour of Prince William Henry (William lV) in command of HMS Pegasus upon the Newfoundland station".

The dish had arrived in New England by 1751, when the Boston Post gave a recipe for it. Smollett, back in England, spoke of it in 1762, when he complained that "my head sings and simmers like a chouder".

The Old French chaudiere gave the Middle English chaudier, chowdier and chowder; its origin is the Late Latin caldaria (cauldron), which in turn came from Latin caldus, calidus (hot). The ultimate origin of all these words seems to be the Indo European kel-, (warm, heat).

In 19th century America, the Chowder and Marching Societies participated in political gatherings, which drew the ire of the largely anti-Press press. The title is spiteful and arch; no group went by this name. The Irish ward bosses were responsible for these social outings, which took place in parks after a festive march. The beer and the hot-pot were paid for by them.

These gatherings seem like a good idea to me, considering the poverty of many of those who feasted on the chowder.

Pat Moynihan, the former Democratic Senator from New York, and one of that great city's finest historians, has written memorably about those days in Beyond the Melting Pot.