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Corn Boiled in the Husks
1 Remove the outer husks, leaving the cob covered with a layer of the young, light husks. These must be opened, of course, to enable you to take away the silk. Have ready a kettle of boiling water, throw in the corn and boil, after it begins to boil, ten minutes. When done, drain, serve in a napkin or corn-cloth as before. Do not remove the husks. Many persons think this the better way of boiling corn, as the husks prevent the sweetness from being drawn out into the water.
1 dozen ears of corn, 1/2 pint of milk, ½ teaspoonful of salt,
A husk-on boil, given here as the sweeter alternative to stripping the ears bare. The instructions and the ingredient list do not quite match, and the timing belongs to a different kind of corn than the one you will buy today.
- The ten minutes is too longModern supersweet and sugary-enhanced hybrids are tender raw and need only 3 to 5 minutes in boiling water, husks on. Ten minutes turns the kernels pasty and dulls the flavour the husk was meant to protect.
- Freshness is the hingeThe whole argument for husk-boiling is retaining sugar. Older, pre-hybrid sweet corn varieties began converting sugar to starch soon after picking, which is part of why cooks fussed over method. Buy corn with green, tight husks and cook it the same day.
- The orphaned ingredientsThe milk and salt at the foot of the entry are not used anywhere in the method; the entry refers back to an earlier one ('as before'), and the list appears to have carried over from it. Ignore them here.
- Do not salt the waterOn salting the water -- Some cooks advise against it, on the belief that salt firms the kernel skins; the point is disputed. You can salt at the table instead.
- Removing the silkPeel back the pale inner husks, strip the silk, then fold the husks back over the ear. A damp paper towel or a soft brush takes off the last threads faster than fingers.
- Corn-cloth and napkinThe recipe offers the two as alternatives; a cloth or napkin under the ears absorbs steam so they do not sit in their own water. A clean tea towel does the same job.
- YieldA dozen ears serves six generously as a side, or four if the corn is the point of the meal.
Sweet corn eaten green on the cob is one of the few genuinely American additions to the nineteenth-century table, adopted from Indigenous cultivation and still faintly suspect to European visitors, who tended to associate maize with animal feed. Cookbooks of the 1870s through the 1900s take up the question of husked versus unhusked boiling, and this entry records the husk-on party's case: that the leaves seal in sweetness the water would otherwise leach away. The concern was real in a way it is no longer, since pre-hybrid sweet corn lost its sugar quickly, whether it came from a kitchen garden or a morning market. The serving napkin is a period touch as well; corn on the cob was awkward enough for polite dining that etiquette writers of the era felt obliged to rule on whether it might be picked up by hand at all.