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Stewed Corn and Tomatoes
Cut the corn from six ears of tender, sweet, green corn; scrape the cobs with back of knife. Cook until tender in as little water as possible, then add an equal quantity of stewed tomatoes. Add one-third cup butter and one tablespoon sugar. Season with salt and pepper, heat to boiling point and turn into hot serving dish.
A late-summer succotash-style side that depends entirely on the corn being fresh. The method is sound; only the proportions and a few unstated details need translating.
- Scraping the cobsThis is the step that matters. After cutting the kernels off, run the back of a knife down the cob to press out the milky starch, which thickens the dish without flour. Skip it and you get watery corn in tomato juice.
- How much cornSix ears of sweet corn yield roughly 3 cups of kernels plus scrapings, so you need about 3 cups of stewed tomatoes to match. That gives six servings as a side.
- "Stewed tomatoes"At this date generally meant peeled tomatoes cooked down with seasoning until thick, either put up at home or opened from a can; practice varied, and seeding was not universal. A 28 oz can of whole tomatoes, drained of excess juice and broken up, stands in well.
- "As little water as possible"A few tablespoons in a covered pan is enough; the corn steams in its own moisture. Sweet corn sold today is generally sweeter and more tender than the varieties available then, so 4 to 5 minutes will usually do, rather than the longer cooking "until tender" may once have implied.
- The butter and sugarOne-third cup of butter for six ears is generous by current taste; 2 to 3 tablespoons carries the dish. Sugar was a common addition to tomatoes in cookery of the period, and would also offset acidic or underripe fruit. With good tomatoes and same-day corn, taste before adding any.
- FinishingBring it just to the boil and serve. Held on the heat, the kernels toughen and the tomato flattens out.
Corn and tomatoes together are one of the reliable September dishes of American cookery, appearing in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century books under names ranging from succotash (when beans join in) to "corn and tomatoes stewed." Its place in a book organized as fifty-two Sunday dinners looks like a calendar decision rather than a culinary one: this is the brief window when sweet corn and ripe tomatoes overlap. The instruction to scrape the cobs both thickens the dish without flour and wastes nothing; corn picked in the morning was already losing sweetness by dinner in a kitchen without refrigerated transport.