Fish, corn, and clam chowders are popular in North America, especially Atlantic Canada and New England.

Additionally, a Portuguese, Brazilian, Galician and Basque fish and shellfish stew is known as caldeirada which appears to have a similar etymology.

[6] Another possible source of the word "chowder" could be the French dish called chaudrée (sometimes spelled chauderée), which is a thick fish soup from the coastal regions of Charente-Maritime and Vendée.

[8] In the sixteenth century in Cornwall and Devon the dialectal word "jowter" was used to describe hawkers, particularly fishmongers, which later turned into "chowder" and "chowter".

[3][10] Chowder was brought to North America with immigrants from England and France and seafarers more than 250 years ago.

[11] An early description of chowder is found in the journal kept by the young botanist Joseph Banks, who visited English and French Labrador fisheries in 1766.

[5] A Manx sailor in his memoirs recalls a meal made aboard a British ship on a voyage through the Caribbean in 1786: "....we frequently served up a mess called chowder, consisting of a mixture of fresh fish, salt pork, pounded biscuit and onions; and which, when well seasoned and stewed, we found to be an excellent palatable dish.

Among French settlers in Canada, it was a custom to stew clams and fish laid in courses with bacon, sea biscuits, and other ingredients in a bucket called a "chaudière".

[17] It was a bowl of simmering chowder by the seaside that provided in its basic form "sustenance of body and mind – a marker of hearth and home, community, family and culture".

It evolved along the coastal shoreline of New England as a "congerie" of simple things, very basic and cooked simply.

Its simplicity made it attractive and it became a regional dish of the New Englanders, and their favourite recipe was "chowder master".

[19] A recipe formulated and published in 1894 by Charles Ranhofer, a famous chef of Delmonico's restaurant, was called "Chowder de Lucines" and had ingredients of pork, clams, potato (sliced to a seven sixteenths-inch size), onion, parsley, tomato, crackers garnished by thyme, salt and pepper.

[20] In most cases, particularly in the Maritime Provinces, Canadian chowder is thinner and more seafood-forward than its creamier American counterparts.

Chowder is a soup with cream or milk mixed with ingredients such as potatoes, sweet corn, smoked haddock, clams and prawns, etc.

Ingredients used in fish chowder may include potato, onion, celery, carrot, corn and bacon.