Food in New England

New England cuisine is strongly based on fish, seafood and dairy products.

New England traditional chowders come from the French thick soups made with fish, seafood, and vegetables. The word chaudiere is the French name for the big copper pot in which those soups were prepared, hence the name chowder.

The New England clam chowder has a lovely creamy base.

New England foods

Maple syrup, apples and cheddar cheese from Vermont.

Cranberries, cod, haddock and clams from Massachussets.

Maine lobster, boiled, broiled, steamed, stuffed or in lobster cakes or lobster Alfredo. Lobster was once so abundant that it was used as fertilizer, not food.

New Haven, Connecticut, is supposed to have seen the birth of the hamburger.

…and food events

In Connecticut, look for the Lobster Weekend at Mystic, in May, or the Oyster Festival in the city of Norwalk, on Labor Day, celebrating the history of the city’s oyster industry.

Enoy the clam festival at Yarmouth, Maine, in July.

Recipes from New England

Apple crisp, CT - Basic apple sauce, CT - Best apple pie, CT - Boston baked beans, MA - Easy old fashioned meatloaf, MA - Election Day cake, CT - Maine lobster, ME - New England clam chowder

New England states

Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont.

Do you know what quahogs are?

Quahogs are hard shell clams native to the Atlantic coast of America. Quahogs grow from Canada to Florida, but they are more abundant in the stretch between Cape Cod and New Jersey. They are also known as round clams or chowder clams.

In local fish markets or restaurants you will find specialist names for different sizes of hard clam, corresponding to their different uses in cooking. The smallest clams are called littlenecks, medium clams are called cherrystones, and the largest are called quahogs or chowder clams.

Visiting New England you’ll come along raw bars specialized in serving littlenecks and cherrystones raw, as you would oysters, on an opened half-shell, with a cocktail sauce, horseradish, or just lemon.

Sometimes, cherrystones are steamed and dipped in butter, but this treatment is more common for other New England clams, the soft-shelled steamers.

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Remarkable

If you are wondering what to do there, there are many things to do in New England. Find below a few of our favorite things.

Visit the aquarium and the old port at Mystic, Connecticut, where you can learn how candles were made and climb inside the old whaling boats.

Whale watching in the Nantucket sound.

Explore Cape Cod and, while you are at it, explore Martha's Vineyard and Natucket Island, only a ferry ride away.

Visit the Plymouth Plantation, at Plymouth, Massachusetts, and see how the first settlers lived and get to know the settlers first hand. Get to know some native American customs.

Climb Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Take a kayak or canoe in the lake Winnipesaukee for a quiet paddle.

Visit the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island.

Fish for crayfish at Ogunquit, Maine. The best bait: a frankfurter.

Where to go from here?

First step would be stocking the staples you need to cook international. Why not follow the recommendations in our basic pantry?

Everything we know about wine is the wine cellar. Get started with wine. Know the basic types, how to taste it, and what is behind the names. Wine begins in the grapes and so should you.

More than wine and food

Find cooking tips, wine suggestions, menus planned and recommendations on how to pair food and wine. if you like travel and you like tasting the local food, this is your site. If you want to know about wine in everyday language, this is the right place. If you want to ignore the cultural stuff, skip this and go for the food recipes and wine suggestions. even if you don't know all the reasons, your food and wine will taste just as good.

Wherever you are

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