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Corn Soup
Split the grains of one dozen ears of corn, and scrape. Boil the cobs in enough water to cover them for ten minutes. Strain this water and use one quart. Add to it slowly one quart of cream, then the corn, season and cook fifteen minutes. Milk may be used instead of cream, thickened with one tablespoon of flour and one of butter rubbed together.
— Mrs. Frank Richardson
A late-summer soup that depends entirely on fresh corn — the cob stock is the whole point of it, and it will not work with frozen kernels off the cob. Twelve ears yields roughly 6 cups of kernels and pulp, enough for 8 servings.
- "Split and scrape"Run a knife tip down the center of each row of kernels to open them, then scrape the cob with the back of the blade to press out the pulp and milky liquid. This is the hinge of the recipe: the starchy corn milk is what gives the soup body, and simply cutting the kernels off whole will leave it thin and watery.
- The cob stockTen minutes is a short extraction. Twenty to thirty minutes at a bare simmer pulls more sweetness out of the cobs, and you can break them in half to fit the pot. Reduce or top up with water so you end with the quart the recipe calls for.
- Cream, then heatA quart of cream against a quart of stock is very rich by current standards. Half cream and half whole milk lightens it. Whichever you use, keep it below a boil once the dairy goes in — corn's own starch plus scorched milk solids will catch on the bottom of the pan quickly.
- The milk variationThe tablespoon each of flour and butter rubbed together is a beurre manié, dropped in and stirred until dissolved. One tablespoon of flour for two quarts of liquid is a very light thickening; two or three gives something closer to a chowder.
- Fifteen minutesReasonable for corn scraped in late August, when the kernels are starchy. Very young, sweet supermarket corn is tender in five to eight minutes and turns dull and pasty if held longer.
- SeasonThe original leaves it entirely open. Salt generously — corn needs more than it seems — with white pepper; nutmeg was a common seasoning in cream soups of the era if you want to go that way. A pinch of sugar is worth having on hand if the corn is not at its peak.
- TextureAs written this is a chunky soup. Pulsing a third of it with an immersion blender and returning it to the pot gives a smoother body without losing the kernels.
Corn soups of this kind run through American community cookbooks from the mid-nineteenth century onward, and they are all built on the same frugal insight: the cob holds as much flavor as the kernel, and throwing it away wastes half the ear. The technique of splitting each row of kernels before scraping — rather than shearing them off whole — was how cooks got at the sweet, starchy pulp without the tough kernel hulls. That the recipe carries a contributor's name tells you what kind of book this is likely to be: a subscription or church collection, gathered from local households, where the credit line was part of the point. The offhand "milk may be used instead of cream" is the honest note in it.