Biscuit Boyled for about an hour". Chowder was not utterly unfamiliar in England at the time, as in Sir Launcelot Greaves (1762) Tobias Smollett has one character state, "My head sings and simmers like a pot of chowder". 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." Cookbooks of the period included recipes for "Chowder, a Sea Dish" which might be thicker than a soup: in 1830 an English baked dish made with salmon and potato was called a chowder. In Merriam-Webster's dictionary chowder is defined as "a thick soup or stew made of seafood or corn with potatoes and onions and milk or tomatoes". History Chowder as it is known today originated as a shipboard dish, and was thickened with the use of hardtack. Chowder was brought to North America with immigrants from England and France and seafarers more than 250 years ago and became popular as a delicious dish, and is now a widely used dish as it is simple to prepare. In 1890, in the magazine American Notes and Queries, it was said that the dish was of French origin. 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", and it thus came to be invented. Then the Native Americans adopted it as "chawder", which was then evolved into "chowder" in America. After the Revolutionary war, the Fourth of July was celebrated with picnics, fireworks, dances and dinners. The foods served varied, changing with the customs of each region. Chowder was one of the dishes commonly served for the celebrations in the Northern United States. In the United States, early chowder making is traced to New England. It was a bowl of simmering chowder by the sea side 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. It is a simple dish of salt