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Green Corn Pudding
Grate the corn from the cobs, and put 1 cupful in a deep buttered baking dish.
Cover this with milk, sprinkle in a little pepper and salt, add 1 tablespoon of butter and set in the oven for ½ hour. Now take out and stir in 1 egg well-beaten and return to oven, leaving it only until the custard has set. A few minutes will suffice. This is a delicious accompaniment to a meat course. What is left over can be warmed for breakfast by putting in a saucepan with a little butter and milk and stirring until it is smoking hot.
A plain corn custard, baked in two stages so the grated kernels soften before the egg goes in. The whole thing hinges on pulling it out while the custard is barely set.
- "Green corn"Fresh sweet corn at the milky stage, not a green-coloured variety and not dried field corn. Two to three large ears grated will give the cupful called for.
- Grating the cobsSplit the kernels down each row with a knife tip, then scrape the cob with the back of the blade to release the milky pulp. That starchy liquid is what thickens the pudding; a food processor gives a coarser, wetter result.
- How much milk"Cover this with milk" is left to judgement. About 1 cup to 1 cupful of grated corn gives a loose custard; less makes it dense. Whole milk is closest to period practice.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A moderate oven (around 350F) suits both stages: half an hour for the corn, then, as the recipe insists, only a few minutes more once the egg goes in.
- Adding the eggThe dish is hot when the beaten egg goes in; stirring a spoonful of the hot corn mixture into the egg first, then combining, guards against the egg setting in threads.
- When it is doneTake it out when the centre still wobbles slightly; residual heat finishes it. Baked until firm all through, the egg weeps and the texture turns watery and grainy.
- YieldServes two to three as a side dish. Scale up in a wider dish rather than a deeper one so the second bake stays short.
Recipes for grated "green corn" puddings, cakes and fritters run through nineteenth-century American and Canadian cookbooks wherever the crop ripened in high summer. The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and drew largely on recipes sent in by Canadian housewives, which may account for the tone here: a short seasonal dish, no oven temperature, and a closing note on reheating the leftovers for breakfast.