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Stewed Corn
Remove the husks and silk from a dozen ears of corn. Score the corn down the centre of each row of grains, then with the back of the knife press out the pulp. When all are cut and pressed, put the corn into a double boiler, add a quarter cup of milk, one tablespoonful or one ounce of butter, salt and pepper to taste. Cook, stirring occasionally, for ten minutes. Serve in a heated dish.
A scraped-corn stew rather than a whole-kernel one: the point of the technique is to leave the tough hulls behind on the cob and cook only the starchy pulp and milk.
- The hinge is the scoringRunning a knife tip down the centre of each row before scraping splits the hull so the pulp can be pressed out with the back of the blade. Cut the kernels off whole instead and you get a different, chewier dish entirely.
- Corn to useSweet corn at the milk stage, freshly picked, is what this assumes. Modern supersweet varieties hold their sugar longer after picking but tend to yield less starchy pulp, so the stew is likely to be thinner and sweeter; older or field-fresh corn thickens better.
- Why a double boilerScraped corn is starchy and scorches readily over direct heat. If you use a heavy saucepan over low heat instead, stir continuously rather than occasionally.
- QuantitiesA dozen ears gives roughly 3 to 4 cups of pulp. A quarter cup of milk is deliberately small — the corn supplies its own liquid — so resist adding more until you see how it thickens.
- ButterThis recipe equates one tablespoon with one ounce; a modern tablespoon of butter is half an ounce. Use the ounce, which is two tablespoons.
- TimingTen minutes over water is enough to cook the starch through and lose the raw taste. Longer and the pulp turns pasty.
- YieldProbably six or so as a side dish; the recipe does not say.
Scraped or "grated" green corn was a common American treatment through the nineteenth century, and cookbooks of the period often distinguish it from corn cut off the cob whole — the hulls were considered indigestible, and pressing out the pulp left them behind. Sweet corn's short season, before refrigeration and long-distance shipping, made it an emphatically seasonal vegetable.