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Corn Pudding
1 dozen large ears of young corn 1 pint of milk 4 eggs 1 teaspoonful of salt ¼ teaspoonful of black pepper Score the corn down the centre of each row of grains, then with the back of the knife press out all the pulp, leaving the hull on the cob. Beat the whites and yolks of the eggs separately, add the yolks to the corn, mix thoroughly; then add the salt, pepper and milk, and stir in carefully the whites of the eggs. Brush a pudding dish lightly with butter, and pour in the mixture. Bake slowly one hour. Serve as an accompaniment to roast beef or lamb.
A plain custard-bound corn pudding of the kind that appeared on late-summer tables when sweet corn was at its peak. The method depends almost entirely on how the corn is taken off the cob.
- The scoring is the whole pointSplitting each row of kernels and then pressing out the pulp with the back of the knife leaves the tough hulls behind on the cob. Cutting the kernels off whole instead gives a pudding full of skins and much less starch to help it set.
- "Bake slowly"Around 300-325F. This is an egg custard, and a hot oven will curdle it and weep liquid; an hour at low heat is right for a dish about two inches deep. A pan of hot water under or around the dish is insurance if your oven runs hot.
- How much cornA dozen large ears of modern sweet corn yields roughly 3 to 3 1/2 cups of scraped pulp. Modern supersweet hybrids are sweeter and juicier than most older varieties, so the pudding will taste sweeter and may set a little softer.
- Beaten whitesFold them in at the end and get the pudding into the oven at once. They lighten the texture rather than leaven it, and the lift is largely lost if the mixture stands.
- Testing for doneThe centre should be just set and a knife inserted an inch from the middle should come out clean. A pudding that puffs and cracks has gone too far.
- YieldServes six to eight as a side dish. Bake in a 1 1/2- to 2-quart dish.
Corn pudding belongs to the American vegetable-custard tradition, in which a summer vegetable is stretched with milk and eggs and baked as a side dish. The scoring-and-scraping method described here was standard in period cookbooks, plausibly because the corn varieties then available had tougher hulls than modern hybrids. Sweet corn was strictly seasonal, glut-cheap in August, and a slow-baked pudding turned a dozen ears into a dish substantial enough to carry a plate alongside cold or roast meat without further cooking on a summer range.