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Small Ears of Corn Pickled
For this select the very tiny ears of corn; the ears must be sufficiently young for the cob to be easily penetrated with a fork. Take off the husks, remove the silk, throw the ears into boiling water, boil five minutes, drain. To each two dozen cobs allow one quart of cider vinegar, put it in a porcelain-lined kettle, add two bay leaves, a slice of onion, one dozen pepper-corns, a blade of mace, six whole cloves. Bring to boiling point, pour over the cobs; stand aside twenty-four hours and they are ready for use. By adding two tablespoonfuls of chopped horse-radish, the cobs will keep nicely all winter.
A vinegar pickle of the simplest kind: blanch, pour over hot spiced vinegar, wait a day. The only real difficulty is sourcing corn young enough.
- What counts as a small earThe fork test is the whole recipe in one line — if the cob resists, it will stay woody no matter how long it sits in vinegar. Ears two to four inches long, picked well before the kernels fill, are what is wanted; supermarket "baby corn" in tins has already been cooked and brined and is not a substitute.
- Blade of maceMace is the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed, and a "blade" is one whole piece of it. Roughly a quarter teaspoon of ground mace stands in, though it will cloud the vinegar.
- Porcelain-lined kettleAn enamelled or stainless pan. The instruction exists because hot vinegar reacts with bare copper and iron, which discolours the pickle and gives it a metallic edge.
- Cider vinegarUse vinegar labelled 5 percent acidity and do not dilute it — the acid is doing all the preserving work here. Nineteenth-century cider vinegar varied, which is part of why keeping qualities were unpredictable.
- The five-minute boilThis sets the colour and softens the cob just enough. Longer and the ears slump; they should still snap when bent.
- Twenty-four hoursThat is enough to season the corn through, not enough to preserve it. Cover the jar, let it cool, and refrigerate rather than leaving it on a counter.
- The horseradish claimChopped horseradish adds heat and some antimicrobial effect, but it is not a preservative in any measurable sense. Treat this as a refrigerator pickle good for a few weeks; if you want jars that hold all winter, follow a current tested canning procedure with a measured hot-water-bath time.
- YieldTwo dozen small ears in a quart of vinegar fills roughly a quart and a half of jar space — a condiment quantity, served alongside cold meat or on a relish plate.
Pickled corn belongs to the American tradition of putting up whatever the garden produced in excess, and small ears were an obvious candidate. The spicing here — bay, peppercorns, mace, cloves, a slice of onion — is the standard English pickling vinegar of the period, applied to a New World vegetable; similar mixtures appear in the same books over walnuts, onions and cauliflower.