10 foods that make America great

Jon Bonné Lifestyle Editor • Profile

Hamburgers. Apple pie. Potato chips. Foods that helped shape our nation.

American food gets an unfair rap these days.  With the rise of ethnic cuisines – whatever that means, in this great melting pot — and supermarkets full of salad bars and microwave dinners, it’s easy to forget how many extraordinary homegrown delights are still served on tables across the land. Foods with a sense of place.  Foods, I don’t feel too bold saying, that helped make America great.

It’s time to celebrate a few.

Our list isn't meant to be comprehensive. We didn't include barbecue because once we started our accounting — from North Carolina pork to Texas Hill Country brisket — it became clear we’d need a long, separate list to give BBQ its due. And apple pie, while iconic, is a European import that spread everywhere in Johnny Appleseed's wake.

All these 10 express their origin, though. And each is worth a trip to hunt in its native habitat, from sea to succulent sea.

1) New England clam chowder (Massachusetts)
While no trip to Boston is complete without a proper bowl of clam chowder, it's not fair to hand this one to Massachusetts alone — or to pretend that chowder is any one thing.

Bob Fila / Chicago Tribune via KRT Clam chowder — as good in a cup as in a bowl.

The original etymology is thought to be French, from chaudière (cauldron), perhaps passed along by French fishermen who crossed the Atlantic in colonial times. In his book “50 Chowders,” Boston chef Jasper White traces the first recipe to a 1751 edition of the Boston Evening Post. However, that soup not only neglects to mention clams but fish at all. Its basic foundation was salt pork and onions, followed by spices and soaked biscuits.

Cod or bass were added in by the end of the 18th century, but not until the mid-1800s do clams begin to appear in recipes, and the milk — now considered an essential component — didn't appear until the 1860s or so.

The formula was cast by the early 20th century, though the creamy classic occasionally vied for competition with tomato-based Manhattan clam chowder. (Not, in fact, from Manhattan.)

The clam of choice is usually the Eastern variety known as a quahog (CO-hog), with a shell thicker than three inches; its meaty insides help give chowder a briny kick.  Smaller clams of the same type, Mercenaria mercenaria, are better known as littlenecks or cherrystones and not usually used for chowder.

A proper chowder is deep and aromatic, with layered flavors atop a porky foundation. Between the Red Sox finally winning, and all that chowder, I'd warn residents of Boston to expect a flood of visitors who won't leave. And I'm not talking about Harvard students.