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Escalloped Sweet Corn
Bread crumbs Salt and pepper Butter Milk Cut the corn from the cob, put a layer in a buttered earthenware dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cover with fine bread crumbs. Repeat this until the dish is full, having the crumbs on the top; then dot with butter and fill the dish with milk.
Bake in a moderate oven till ready.
A scratch recipe in the old style: the ingredient list gives no quantities and the instruction is to bake "till ready." Everything hinges on the ratio of milk to crumbs and on not overcooking the corn.
- Moderate ovenRead that as roughly 350-375F, the usual modern equivalent. Much hotter and the top crumbs are likely to scorch before the milk sets.
- Quantities to work fromFor a 1.5-quart dish: about 4 cups corn kernels (6 to 8 ears), 1 cup fine dry bread crumbs, 2 tablespoons butter, and roughly 1.5 cups milk. The recipe says to fill the dish with milk; milk coming about level with the top layer of corn is a reasonable reading.
- TimingFresh corn needs about 30 to 40 minutes, until the milk is set and the top browned. The recipe gives no time, only "till ready."
- Scraping the cobAfter cutting the kernels, run the back of the knife down the cob to press out the milky pulp, which adds starch and body. The recipe itself directs only that the corn be cut from the cob.
- Crumbs"Fine bread crumbs" here means dry crumbs from stale bread, not the soft fresh sort and certainly not panko. Dry crumbs absorb the milk and hold the layers; fresh ones turn to paste.
- The earthenware dishEarthenware heats slowly and holds heat evenly. A modern stoneware or glass baking dish behaves much the same; thin metal is more likely to overcook the edges.
- Canned or frozen cornBoth work, but drain canned corn well and cut the milk back by a third, since neither contributes the cob starch. Frozen kernels should be thawed and patted dry.
- YieldA 1.5-quart dish serves six as a side.
Escalloped dishes — layers of a vegetable or fish alternating with crumbs, moistened with milk or cream and baked — were common in American and British cookery through the nineteenth century, and the name is generally traced to the scallop shells in which such mixtures were once baked and served. Sweet corn made the technique especially useful in the United States, where the season is short and abundant: a household with more ears than it could eat at one meal could turn the surplus into something that stretched with bread.