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Scalloped Corn (Husk one dozen ears of corn)
Husk one dozen ears of corn, score and press out the pulp as previously directed. Scald, pare and cut fine six good-sized ripe tomatoes. Measure a half pint of stale bread crumbs. Put a layer of corn in the bottom of a baking dish, then a layer of tomatoes, then a sprinkling of bread crumbs, dust with salt and pepper; another layer of corn, then the tomatoes, bread crumbs, and so continue until all the ingredients are used, having the last layer bread crumbs. Put bits of butter over the top and bake in a moderate oven a half hour.
A layered corn-and-tomato bake from the era when sweet corn was cut rather than kerneled. The technique in the first line is the part that needs translating.
- "Score and press out the pulp"Run a knife tip down the centre of each row of kernels, then scrape the cob with the back of the blade so the milky interior comes away and the tough hulls stay behind. This gives a creamy pulp, not whole kernels — cutting kernels off flat produces a much drier, chewier dish. A dozen ears yields roughly 3 to 4 cups.
- Half pint of crumbsOne cup by modern measure. "Stale" means dry and firm bread grated or crumbed by hand, closer to coarse fresh crumbs than to fine dried packaged crumbs, which will pack down and turn pasty.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as about 350°F (period usage ran to 375°F). Half an hour is enough to set the corn if the pulp went in raw and creamy; if the top is pale at that point, give it a few minutes under the broiler rather than longer baking, which dulls the tomatoes.
- ButterNo quantity is given. Two to three tablespoons in small bits over the crumb layer is right for a dish this size — enough to brown the top without pooling.
- Scalding the tomatoesThirty seconds in boiling water, then cold, and the skins slip off. Drain the chopped flesh before layering; six large ripe tomatoes carry a lot of water and the crumbs are doing most of the thickening here.
- Dish and yieldA 2-quart baking dish holds this comfortably. It serves six as a side, four if it is the centre of a summer supper.
- SeasoningSalt goes between every layer, as written — corn pulp and unsalted tomato are both bland, and salting only the top leaves the middle flat.
Scalloped dishes are generally traced to the shell — the *escallop* — in which minced food was once baked, and by the late nineteenth century the word had come to mean anything layered with crumbs and butter and browned in the oven. Corn and tomatoes appear together constantly in American vegetable cookery of the period for the plain reason that they ripen together, and such a book tends to record what the garden offered in the same week. The scraping method described here reflects the older sweet varieties of the day, whose hulls are often said to have been tougher than those of modern cultivars.