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Corn Boiled in the Husks
Remove the green outside husks; strip down the inner husks and carefully remove the silk from the corn. Then replace the light husks and tie them at the upper end of the ear. Have ready a kettle of fresh boiling water, throw the corn into it, and boil, after it begins to boil, five minutes. Serve at once in a corn cloth.
A method rather than a formula, and the technique still works: the inner husks hold moisture against the kernels and keep the sugars from leaching into the water.
- Five minutes is rightModern sweet corn varieties are generally more tender than the field corn of the period, so five minutes from the return to a boil is ample. Older or larger ears may want a little longer; overboiled kernels turn starchy and tough.
- No salt in the waterSome cookery books of the period advised against salting corn water, on the traditional grounds that salt toughens the hulls. Salt at the table instead.
- Tying the husksPlain cotton kitchen string is easiest. The point is simply to keep the peeled-back inner husks wrapped around the ear while it cooks.
- A "corn cloth"A folded napkin laid in a serving dish, with the ears wrapped in it to hold heat and absorb steam. A clean linen tea towel in a warmed bowl does the same job.
- Fresh boiling waterThe water should be at a full boil before the ears go in, and clean rather than reused. Cook in two batches rather than crowding the pot.
- YieldFigure one to two ears per person as a side dish. This is a same-hour recipe — corn boiled and held loses sweetness quickly, which is why the original says serve at once.
Boiling in the husk is generally traced to Native American practice and was recommended in print through the 1800s on the grounds that the husk keeps in the sweetness — a claim that turns out to be broadly correct, since sugars and soluble solids do leach into open cooking water. Sweet corn came in with high summer, and a five-minute boil kept the kitchen from becoming unbearable. Before modern supersweet hybrids, corn was picked and cooked the same day because its sugar converts to starch quickly after picking, which is why writers of the time were so insistent about speed at every stage.