Corn Soup
1 can corn 2 tablespoons butter 1 pint boiling water 2 tablespoons flour 1 pint milk 1 teaspoon salt 1 slice onion Few grains pepper Chop the corn, add water, and simmer twenty minutes; rub through a sieve. Scald milk with onion, remove onion, and add milk to corn. Bind with butter and flour cooked together. Add salt and pepper. Serve with popped corn.
A plain white soup of the Boston cooking-school type: canned corn simmered, sieved, and bound with a butter-and-flour roux. The whole thing takes about half an hour.
- The canA period can of corn held roughly 2 cups. Modern cans run about 15 oz, or roughly 1 1/2 cups drained, so use one and a half cans, or two cups of frozen kernels, to keep the proportions.
- Chopping and sievingChopping first helps the kernels give up their starch during the simmer. Rubbing through a sieve is the point of the recipe -- it removes the tough hulls and leaves a smooth purée. A food mill or a blitz in the blender followed by a sieve does the same work faster; skipping the sieve entirely leaves the soup gritty.
- Scalding the milkScald means heating to just below the boil, until bubbles form at the edge. The onion slice is there to perfume the milk in those few minutes and is then discarded; leave it in longer if you want a stronger flavour.
- BindingCook the butter and flour together for a minute or two without colouring, then whisk the hot corn and milk mixture into it gradually. Add the roux to the soup off the boil and stir constantly, or you will get lumps and a raw-flour taste.
- CurdlingOnce the milk is in, hold the soup below a simmer. A hard boil after the dairy goes in can make it grainy.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt assumes unsalted canned corn. Most canned corn today is salted, so add half and taste at the end.
- Yield and servingMakes something over a quart, four to six small first-course bowls. The popped corn garnish should go on at the table -- floated early it turns to mush.