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Bina's Stewed Corn
Shave corn off the ear, being careful not to cut into the cob; to three pints corn add three table-spoons butter, pepper and salt, and just enough water to cover; place in a skillet, cover and cook rather slowly with not too hot a fire, from half to three-quarters of an hour, stir with a spoon often, and if necessary add more water, for the corn must not brown; if desired, a few moments before it is done, add half cup sweet cream thickened with teaspoon flour; boil well and serve with roast beef, escaloped tomatoes and mashed potatoes. Some stew tomatoes, and just before serving mix them with the corn.
A plain stewed corn from the era before corn was bred for high sugar, which is the one thing that changes how you should cook it.
- QuantityThree pints of cut kernels is roughly 8 to 10 large ears. Figure this serves six as a side dish.
- Cooking timeHalf to three-quarters of an hour reflects corn that was starchier and less sugary than today's, often picked at a riper stage; sweet corn varieties did exist by the 1870s, so this need not have been field or dent corn. Modern sweet corn is tender in roughly 8 to 12 minutes and turns pasty if held much longer.
- The hinge: no browningThe instruction to add water and stir often is there to keep the milky starch from catching. Use a heavy pan, keep the heat low, and scrape the bottom each time you stir.
- Cutting the cornShaving without cutting the cob keeps woody bits out. After shaving, run the back of the knife down each cob to press out the remaining milk — that liquid adds body.
- Sweet cream"Sweet" means fresh and unsoured, as distinct from the sour cream a nineteenth-century kitchen also had on hand. Use heavy cream; whisk the teaspoon of flour into it cold so it goes in without lumps.
- SkilletA skillet here is any wide, heavy pan with a lid — cast iron is the period vessel and still the right one, since it holds an even low heat.
- The tomato variationThe recipe stews the tomatoes separately and folds them in just before serving rather than cooking them with the corn; no reason is given.
Buckeye Cookery (1877) collects recipes credited to the women who contributed them, and "Bina" is one of dozens of first names and initials scattered through the book — a record of a shared Ohio household economy rather than a professional kitchen. Stewed corn belongs to the late-summer weeks when the crop came in faster than a family could eat it fresh, and the recipe assumes three-quarters of an hour of slow work. The suggested accompaniments — roast beef, escalloped tomatoes, mashed potatoes — sketch a Midwestern meal where several vegetable dishes reached the table at once, and the note that "some stew tomatoes" and combine them points toward the corn-and-tomato pairing that shows up across American regional cooking, generally traced back to Native American practice of growing and cooking the two together.