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Hulled-Corn Soup
Mash or chop the corn fine before sifting, then stir in gradually hot milk till it reaches the consistency of cream vegetable soup. Add salt and pepper to taste, and put on to boil with a generous tablespoonful of butter to each quart of the mixture. Serve with croutons. If the slightly granular character is an objection, the usual thickening may be added, of 1 tablespoonful each of butter and flour cooked together and stirred into the boiling soup. If a corn puree is preferred, mash and sift the corn; heat, and season with butter, salt and pepper. May be served as a vegetable, or as a garnish for sausage or pork chops.
This is a milk-thickened puree of cooked hulled corn — what a modern American cook would call hominy. The whole thing hinges on how finely you break the corn down and how gently you heat the milk afterward.
- Hulled corn is hominyHulled corn is field corn whose tough hull and germ have been loosened in an alkaline bath, then rinsed and simmered until tender. Canned or frozen whole hominy, drained and rinsed, is the direct equivalent; dried posole works if you simmer it until fully soft first. Ordinary sweet corn is not a substitute — the flavor and the starch behave differently.
- Sifting means sieving"Sift" here means pressing the mashed corn through a fine sieve or food mill to leave the skins and coarse bits behind. A food processor or blender will chop but not strain, so pass the puree through a sieve afterward if you want it smooth. The granular texture the recipe apologizes for is exactly what remains when the sieving is skipped.
- ProportionsNo quantity of corn is given, and the guide is consistency rather than measurement. Roughly equal volumes of pureed hominy and hot milk will reach the body of a cream soup; scale to however much soup you want, remembering that the butter ratio is given per quart of the finished mixture.
- ButterA generous tablespoon of butter per quart of finished soup is the original ratio. That is modest by modern standards for a cream soup, and 2 tablespoons per quart is closer to current taste.
- Heating the milkAdd the milk hot and stir it in gradually, or the starch will set in lumps. Once combined, bring it up over low heat and stir often — a corn-and-milk puree scorches on the bottom of the pan quickly, and scorched milk cannot be rescued.
- The optional thickeningOne tablespoon each of butter and flour cooked together is a small roux. Cook it two or three minutes so it loses its raw taste, then whisk it into the boiling soup and let the soup simmer a couple of minutes to thicken fully.
- SeasoningHominy is bland and absorbs salt heavily; season at the end and taste more than once. White pepper keeps the appearance clean if that matters to you.
- The puree variationMade without milk, the same mash becomes a side dish rather than a soup. Keep it stiff enough to hold its shape on the plate, and serve it hot alongside sausage or pork chops as the recipe suggests.