Don't You Dare Use This Recipe, It's Forbidden in Massachusetts

Massachusetts has plenty of things to be proud of including being the home state of delicious treats including chocolate chip cookies, Hoodsie Cups, Fluff, apple cider doughnuts, Cape Cod Potato Chips, Squeeze Soda (invented in Berkshire County, Adams to be exact), and many more items, too many to mention here.

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One delicious food Massachusetts residents take very seriously is New England Clam Chowder. According to Eater.com, the following is the definition of New England Clam Chowder:

New England clam chowder is defined as a thick chowder made from clams, potatoes, onions, sometimes salt pork, and milk or cream. The recipe usually calls for heavy cream, light cream, or whole milk as the base for the soup. This addition of milk or cream — producing the soup's unmistakable white color — is the biggest difference between the New England style and all the rest.

One thing you won't find many New England Clam Chowder purists doing to their masterpiece recipes is adding tomatoes to their clam chowder dishes. Most folks in Massachusetts and across New England call this blasphemy and you would probably be ostracized from the community if you were caught adding tomatoes to the dish. If you do some searching online you'll find information regarding a 1939 bill that was passed in Massachusetts making it illegal to include tomatoes in clam chowder recipes here in the Bay State.

What side of the fence are you on? Do you prefer tomatoes in your clam chowder and lean toward the Manhattan style or are you a New England purist who keeps tomatoes as far away from clam chowder as possible? If it's the former, you may want to pack your bags and relocate to New York.

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Source: Don’t You Dare Use This Recipe, It’s Forbidden in Massachusetts

Filed Under: Berkshire County, Boston, Massachusetts, New England

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