USA / New England

New England American

Clam chowder: cream-and-quahog.

33 dishes · 97 ingredients · 18 techniquesReference

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Signature·Dish

Clam Chowder

A creamy soup made with clams, potatoes, and onions

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New England eats from the cold Atlantic and the Yankee Puritan inheritance. Clam chowder — quahog clams, salt pork, potato, onion, milk and cream — is the regional bowl (red Manhattan-style with tomato is heresy in Boston; Maine cooks make a clearer brothy version). Lobster rolls (Maine: chilled, mayo-dressed, on a buttered split-top bun; Connecticut: warm, butter-poached, simpler) define summer. Boston baked beans — molasses-sweetened navy beans slow-cooked Saturday night — gave Boston the nickname Beantown. Cape Cod cod, Vermont maple syrup, New Hampshire whoopie pies, Boston cream pie (cake, custard, chocolate glaze — invented at Boston's Parker House). The cuisine is cold-water seafood, dairy-rich, frugal Yankee, and shaped by 400-year-old British colonial recipes adapting to American shores.

The Palate

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Clam Chowder

Quahog clams simmered with salt pork, potato, onion, then enriched with milk and cream until thick. White, creamy, never tomato. Eaten with oyster crackers.

Why start here · Clam chowder is Boston's defining bowl. Manhattan-style (with tomato) is, in Boston, a felony. The salt-pork-and-cream technique is the New England soul.

Lobster Roll

Cold lobster meat lightly dressed with mayonnaise, lemon, and celery (Maine-style) OR warm butter-poached lobster (Connecticut-style), piled on a split-top New England hot dog bun, toasted on the cut sides.

Why start here · The Maine-vs-Connecticut lobster roll debate is a New England fault line. Both are correct; both are summer.

The Pantry

Egg

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How They Cook

Techniques that define this cuisine

Hong Shao

Vermont Maple Walnut Ice Cream

Roux

Clam Chowder

Baking

Anadama Bread Apple Crisp Baked Stuffed Lobster

Roasting

Baked Stuffed Lobster Cranberry Sauce Pumpkin Pie

See 14 more techniques›

Kindred Kitchens

Cuisines built on the same signature ingredients

LombardItaly / Lombardy

via Cornmeal, Celery, Breadcrumbs

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Other regions

Siblings within American — each its own tradition.

Southern American

Soul food and BBQ heritage — fried chicken, biscuits, collards, pecan pie.

Mid-Atlantic American

Urban Northeast immigrant cooking — Philly cheesesteak, NY pizza, Buffalo wings, Baltimore crabs.

Midwestern American

Heartland-farmer pragmatism — Chicago deep-dish, hotdish, Wisconsin cheese, Detroit Coney.

BBQ-TexMex American

Texas BBQ and Tex-Mex border — brisket, chili, nachos, fajitas, breakfast tacos.

Californian American

Pacific-Rim seasonal fusion — Cioppino, avocado toast, sourdough, In-N-Out.

Southwestern American

Red and green chile, pinto beans, and the question 'red or green?' — the New Mexico and Arizona table.

Appalachian American

The mountain foodways of Appalachia — soup beans simmered with a ham hock and eaten with cornbread, foraged spring ramps, sorghum syrup poured over biscuits, and apples dried and stacked into spiced cakes. A thrifty cuisine of hog, corn and preservation, with deep Scots-Irish and Cherokee roots.

Pacific Northwest American

Salmon, Dungeness crab, and berries — the cool, water-rich corner of Oregon and Washington.

Floridian American

Florida's sun-and-sea cooking — stone-crab claws with mustard sauce, grouper and conch from the Gulf and the Keys, citrus in every dessert, and the Cuban-American table of Tampa and Miami: pressed Cuban sandwiches, black beans and rice, picadillo. Caribbean, Cuban and Cracker-South strands meet on the peninsula.

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