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Corn Pudding (Select young corn draw a sharp)
Select young corn; draw a sharp knife through each row lengthwise and scrape out the pulp. To a pint of the pulp, add a quart of milk, three beaten eggs and a lump of butter. Put into a moderately hot oven and stir until it begins to thicken; then add salt to season and bake until lightly browned. Time-about one hour and a half in a moderate oven.
A milk-and-egg custard set with scraped corn, and it behaves like a custard: gentle heat, and stop when it just sets. The recipe's own two-stage method — stir it in the oven until it thickens, then leave it alone — is the part worth following.
- Scraping, not cuttingSplitting each row lengthwise with a knife tip and then scraping releases the milky pulp while leaving the tough hull on the cob. Cut kernels give a chewier pudding with far less body, since the starch in that pulp is what thickens the custard.
- How much cornA pint of pulp is likely to take somewhere around 6 to 8 medium ears, depending on variety and how closely you scrape. Modern supersweet hybrids are juicier and sweeter than the older open-pollinated sweet corns, so expect a looser, more sugary result.
- MeasuresA quart of milk is 4 cups. A "lump of butter" is not a fixed measure; 1 to 2 tablespoons is a sensible reading here. Whole milk, not skim -- the fat keeps the custard tender.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven is usually read as roughly 350F. "Moderately hot" for the first stirring stage would be a little higher, around 375F; drop back to about 350F once it begins to thicken.
- The stirring stageStirring while it heats distributes the heat and keeps the eggs from setting in ropes at the edges. Once the mixture coats the spoon, stop stirring, as the recipe directs, and let it bake undisturbed.
- Ratio and timingThree eggs to a quart of milk is a lean custard. The recipe's hour and a half is plausible at a moderate heat in a deep dish, given the quantity of milk, but check at 60 minutes: it is done when the center is just barely wobbly and a knife slid in comes out clean. Baked past that point the eggs weep and the pudding turns watery.
- Water bathThe original does not call for one, but a roasting pan of hot water under the dish is the simplest insurance against curdled edges in an oven that runs hot.
- Salt timingSalt is added late here, after thickening. There is no harm in adding it at the start; a scant teaspoon for a quart of milk, plus a grind of pepper, which the recipe omits.
- YieldAbout 6 to 8 side servings in a 2-quart baking dish. It is best warm, within half an hour of coming out.
Corn pudding is often said to sit at the point where an English baked custard met American sweet corn, and green corn was in any case a strictly seasonal luxury \,, and worth a dish of its own while it lasted \, available for a few weeks in late summer. The scraping technique the recipe insists on was standard in nineteenth-century kitchens for what was called "green corn" or "milky corn," and it is the same preparation behind grated-corn fritters and the Southern dish sometimes called corn oysters. Recipes of this kind are also a reminder that home cooks then judged doneness by look and feel rather than by a thermometer, and that the oven, heated by wood or coal, was described in relative terms because there was no dial to read.