Maine’s Great Clam Chowder War of 1939

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A tomato-hating politician from Rockland set off the Maine clam chowder war of 1939 when he drafted a bill to criminalize clam chowder with tomato.

Guilty offenders would have to dig up a barrel of clams at high tide. As any clammer will tell you, that is not only cruel and unusual punishment, but impossible.

State Rep. Cleveland Sleeper never got to file his bill, as the clam chowder war ended  without government interference.

A high-profile chowder contest settled the controversy. Such luminaries as Gov. Lewis O. Barrow and Ruth Wakefield, inventor of the chocolate-chip cookie, judged the contest.

The Clam Chowder War

Sleeper, a state representative since 1933, had facetiously prepared bills banning the tomato from clam chowder for several years. And then the Maine Hotel Association decided to end the clam chowder war at its mid-winter frolic in Portland.

Sleeper brought his chef. His rival, Philadelphia restaurateur Harry Tully, brought his.

Sleeper’s chef cooked up traditional Maine clam chowder, while Tully’s made tomato-based Manhattan Clam Chowder.

“Each appealed to the palates of a distinguished gallery of chowder epicures,” reported the Associated Press in the Nashua Telegraph. “The epicures, headed by Maine’s Governor, Lewis O. Barrows, gravely sipped the rival concoctions.”

Sleeper tried the Manhattan chowder. “Ugh, this is a vegetable soup, not clam chowder,” he said.

“The tomato lends flavor to the clam,” retorted Tully.

Tully’s Manhattan Clam Chowder didn’t stand a chance. The judges voted unanimously for its New England rival.

“Maine Chowder Wins Over Tomato-Type” read the Lewiston Sun Journal headline. “Rep. Sleeper’s Campaign for “Unpolluted” Dish Is Successful.

 

Sleeper Triumphant

Then the story went on:  “Good old-fashioned New England clam chowder drew the nod of epicures here today in a battle de cuisine with its big-city sister, tomato-impregnated Manhattan clam chowder.”

Sleeper waxed triumphant. “If a clam could vote, I would be elected President,” he crowed.

Then a year later, Eleanor Early picked up the anti-tomato crusade in her 1940 book, A New England Sampler. “There is a terrible pink mixture (with tomatoes in it and herbs) called Manhattan Clam Chowder, that is only a vegetable soup, and not to be confused with New England Clam Chowder, nor spoken of in the same breath,” she wrote. “Tomatoes and clams have no more affinity than ice cream and horseradish.”

Falderal

Cleveland Sleeper then went on to somewhat greater political heights. He served in the Coast Guard Auxiliary during World War II and subsequently won election  to the Maine state Senate in 1945. He and his wife, Doris Bradlee Sleeper, had two daughters and three sons. A Rotarian, he ran a fuel-oil business for many years.

In April 1956, he wrote a letter to the editor of the Rotarian praising the magazine.

“Between The Rotarian, The Saturday Evening Post, Time magazine, and Rockland’s basketball team, I have very little time for television or other modern falderals,” he wrote.

Or, we presume, Manhattan Clam Chowder.

For Jacques Pepin’s New England Clam Chowder recipe, click here.

Images: “ManhattanClamChowder” by stu_spivack – Flickr. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Ruth Wakefield By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40125741.

This story about the clam chowder war was updated in 2024.