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Stewed Corn
Cut with a sharp knife through the center of every row of grains, and cut off the outer edge; then with the back of the blade push out the yellow eye, with the rich, creamy center of the grain, leaving the hull on the cob. To one quart of this add half a pint rich milk, and stew until cooked in a covered tin pail, in a kettle one-third full of boiling water; then add salt, white pepper, and two or three ounces butter; allow two hours for cooking; it seems a long time, but there is no danger of burning, and it requires no more attention than to stir it occasionally and to keep good the supply of water. If drier than liked, add more milk or cream. Or, after cutting corn from the cob, boil the cobs ten or fifteen minutes and take out and put corn in same water; when tender, add a dressing of milk, butter, pepper and salt, and just before serving, stir in beaten eggs, allowing three eggs to a dozen ears of corn.
Two methods in one entry: a long, gentle double-boiler stew of scraped corn, and a quicker version thickened with egg. The first depends on a technique worth learning; the second depends on not letting the eggs scramble.
- The hinge: scrape, don't cutThe whole character of the first method comes from splitting each row of kernels and pushing out the pulp with the back of the blade, leaving the hulls on the cob. What you get is milky and starchy rather than a pile of whole kernels, and it thickens itself as it cooks. Cutting kernels off whole gives a different, thinner dish.
- Yield of scraped cornA quart of scraped pulp takes roughly 12 to 16 large ears. The finished dish serves six to eight as a side.
- Half a pintOne cup. "Rich milk" meant milk that had not been skimmed, so whole milk is the nearest modern equivalent; half-and-half will give a richer result if you want one.
- Two or three ounces butterFour to six tablespoons. That is generous by modern habit; three tablespoons is plenty if the corn is sweet.
- A tin pail in a kettleThis is a makeshift double boiler. Use a metal or heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, or a proper double boiler, and top up the water as it evaporates.
- Two hours is for the corn they hadThe sweet corn of the period was starchier than modern sugar-enhanced and supersweet varieties, which are tender in 20 to 30 minutes over water and will taste flat and cooked-out at two hours. Judge by texture, not the clock.
- The egg finishThree eggs to a dozen ears works, but stir them in off the heat, ideally tempered first with a ladle of the hot corn. If the mixture boils after the eggs go in it will curdle into sweet scrambled egg.
- The cob brothSimmering the stripped cobs ten to fifteen minutes and cooking the corn in that water is sound and still worth doing; the cobs carry a lot of the corn flavor. Salt it lightly, as it reduces.
- White pepperCommonly called for in pale dishes so no dark flecks show. Black pepper will do the job if appearance is not a concern, though the flavour is not identical.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping came out of Ohio in the 1870s and reflects a kitchen where corn was seasonal, abundant for a few weeks, and eaten in every form the household could manage. This scraping technique, which yields what later cooks would call creamed or "cream-style" corn without any cream in the first stage, was one common way to get a smooth dish out of green corn before canned cream-style corn made it a pantry item. The instruction to stew in a covered pail set in boiling water reflects a stovetop of uneven, hard-to-regulate heat, where anything milky left over a direct flame would catch and scorch. The egg-thickened variant sits close to another Midwestern dish, corn pudding, which takes similar ingredients into the oven instead.