Corn Pudding
Take six ears of corn. Boil and grate them; add a spoonful of sugar, pinch of salt, a spoonful of cream, four yolks of eggs and the four whites, well whipped up. Mix well. Put in a buttered dish, and bake for half an hour in rather warm oven, as you would for a soufflé.
A tender, soufflé-like corn custard — fresh corn grated to a pulp, lightened with whipped egg whites, and baked just until set.
- Grate for “corn milk”Boiling then grating the ears releases the starchy pulp and “milk” that thicken the pudding; six ears yields roughly 3 cups.
- Soufflé liftWhipping the whites separately and folding them in gives the airy rise — fold gently so you don’t deflate them.
- “Rather warm oven”Bake at a moderate 350–375°F (175–190°C), soufflé-style, for about 30 minutes until puffed and just set.
- Butter the dish wellA well-buttered dish keeps the delicate custard from sticking and helps it rise evenly.
- Sweet or savoryA single spoon of sugar keeps this barely sweet — it sits comfortably between dessert and side dish.
Corn pudding is one of the oldest American dishes, its roots in the kitchens of Native peoples who first cultivated maize and cooked its tender “green corn” into soft, milky dishes. Colonists adopted the grain out of necessity — it thrived where familiar European wheat struggled — and dressed it with eggs, cream, and sugar into the custardy pudding we know. It became a fixture of Southern and Mid-Atlantic tables, especially at the height of summer when the corn is young and sweet. Few dishes trace so directly back to the indigenous foundations of American cooking.
From page 60 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
