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Corn Gems
1 pint of corn, 1 pint of milk, 1 tablespoonful of butter, 3 eggs, I 1½ pints of flour, 1/2 teaspoonful of salt, 2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder.
Scrape the corn and press it out as directed, on Page 40, Corn Fritters. Add to it the milk, salt, yolks of the eggs
A corn muffin batter baked in cast-iron gem pans, from the era when fresh scraped corn was a summer staple. A few of the measures and vessels need translating.
- What a gem pan isGems were baked in heavy cast-iron gem pans — shallow, oval or round cups in a single iron plate, the ancestor of the muffin tin. Period cookbooks commonly direct that the pans be greased and heated before the batter goes in, which helps account for the crisp shell. A cast-iron muffin or popover pan preheated in the oven behaves much the same way; a light aluminium tin will not.
- A pint of cornCorn is measured by volume here, not by ear: 1 pint is 2 cups of scraped kernels and pulp, roughly 4 to 6 medium ears depending on size. Frozen corn kernels will not substitute directly, since the recipe depends on the starchy milk pressed from the cob.
- Scraping the cornThe referenced method means splitting each row of kernels with a knife tip and scraping the pulp and milk out with the back of the blade, leaving the tough hulls on the cob. That pulp is the binder; cutting whole kernels off instead gives a looser batter and a coarser crumb.
- The flour quantity is unclearThe flour is written as both a single unit and 1½ pints, which cannot both be right. A pint of flour is about 2 cups sifted; treat the amount as uncertain and add flour gradually until the batter is thick enough to mound on a spoon.
- Baking powder of the periodTwo teaspoons of baking powder to two to three cups of flour is on the light side by modern practice, which usually runs about a teaspoon per cup. Period baking powders varied in strength, and the beaten egg whites were expected to do part of the lifting.
- The whitesOnly the yolks go into the wet mixture. The recipe as printed here breaks off before the whites are accounted for; the usual period handling was to beat them stiff and fold them in last, after the flour. Fold gently and get the batter into hot pans straight away rather than letting it stand.
- YieldThe quantities make roughly 18 to 24 standard gems, best eaten within an hour of baking.
Gems take their name from the gem pan, a cast-iron baking plate attested in American kitchens from roughly the 1860s onward and in constant use into the twentieth century; by the 1880s "gem" simply meant a small quick bread baked in one, and cookbooks printed dozens of variations — graham gems, rye gems, corn gems. What the recipe itself shows is how green corn was understood at the time: a fresh summer vegetable with a short season, scraped from the cob and used up quickly in fritters, puddings, soups and batters before it toughened. The recipe cross-references a scraping technique, which is often said to have been a familiar skill in period kitchens.