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Corn Balls
Score and scrape from the cob enough young green corn to make 1 pint. Add to this 4 well-beaten eggs, a cup of milk, a level teaspoonful of salt, and a little white pepper. Beat thoroughly together and add half a cupful of flour into which has been sifted a teaspoonful of baking-powder, beating all well again. Butter small cups, fill them three-quarters full of the mixture, set in a steamer, and steam half an hour. Or set the cups in a pan with water nearly to the tops, and bake the same length of time in a hot oven. Serve with roast beef, fried ham, or other hot meats.
A steamed corn custard-pudding baked or steamed in individual cups, meant as a starchy side with meat. The whole thing hinges on how the corn is taken off the cob.
- Score and scrapeRun a knife down the centre of each row of kernels, then scrape the cob with the back of the blade. This releases the milky pulp and leaves the tough hulls behind, which is what gives the mixture its body. Simply cutting whole kernels off gives a looser, chewier result.
- "Green corn"Fresh sweet corn at the milk stage, not a variety or colour. Six to eight ears will yield the pint of scraped pulp called for; a pint here is 2 cups by volume of pulp and juice together.
- Oven heatA "hot oven" in this period is 400-425F. Because the cups sit in a water bath, the custard will not scorch, but at the top of that range the tops set fast; 400F is comfortable for the half hour given.
- The cupsSmall buttered custard cups or ramekins of 4-6 oz. Filling three-quarters full leaves room for the rise from the baking powder without the mixture climbing over into the water.
- Water bath depth"Nearly to the tops" is more water than modern practice uses and makes the pan awkward to move. Halfway up the cups is enough insulation, and pour boiling water in so the bake starts evenly.
- Steaming versionCover the cups loosely with foil or a cloth under the steamer lid so condensation does not pool on the surface. Half an hour is right for cups this size; test with a knife point, which should come out clean.
- YieldEight or so cups, depending on their size, serving four to six as a side dish. They unmould best after five minutes' rest and are meant to be eaten hot.
Scraped green corn puddings run right through nineteenth-century American cookery, from the plainest cornmeal mush to the eggy, custard-set versions that appear in late-Victorian compilations like this one. The technique of scoring the kernel rows and scraping rather than cutting is often traced to Native American practice, though the line of transmission is not documented; it survives today in corn "milk" for chowders and puddings. The instruction to serve it with roast beef or fried ham marks it as a starch course, filling the place a Yorkshire pudding or a plate of fritters would take at the same table.