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To Cook Dry Corn
Cover one pint of corn with warm water and soak over night. In the morning, if the corn has absorbed all the water, add more and cook slowly on the back part of the stove for two hours. At the end of this time the water should be entirely absorbed; if not, remove the lid and boil rapidly a few moments, then add a half cup of cream, one tablespoonful of butter, a palatable seasoning of salt and pepper. Serve very hot.
This is dried sweet corn, not field corn or hominy, and the whole recipe hinges on rehydration rather than cooking. Two things decide the outcome: a long soak, and heat low enough that the kernels never scorch as the last of the water goes.
- What "dry corn" meansDried sweet corn — sweet corn cut from the cob and dried, sold today as Pennsylvania Dutch or Cope's style dried corn. It is not hominy, not popcorn, and not polenta corn, and none of those will substitute. It swells noticeably as it soaks and cooks, so allow room in the pan.
- The soak is not optionalOvernight in warm water is the minimum. Under-soaked kernels stay leathery in the middle no matter how long they simmer, and no amount of cream at the end will fix that texture.
- "The back part of the stove"On a wood range the back was generally the coolest zone, used for long unattended simmering. Use the lowest burner setting with a lid. It should barely move, not bubble.
- Watch the last twenty minutesThe instruction to have the water "entirely absorbed" puts the pan at risk of catching just as it finishes. Stir up from the bottom near the end, and add water in small splashes if the corn is still firm — dried corn absorbs unpredictably depending on how old it is.
- Cream and butter go in off the heatAdd the half cup of cream and tablespoon of butter after the corn is tender and stir just until warmed through; the recipe does not call for boiling afterwards, and prolonged boiling can curdle cream.
- Season at the endSalt concentrates as the liquid cooks away, so add salt and pepper once the cream is in.
- YieldServes four as a side dish. It thickens considerably as it cools, so serve it straight from the pan; a little extra cream loosens leftovers when reheating.
Drying sweet corn was one of the standard ways an American household kept the summer crop before home canning and freezing became routine — kernels were cut from the cob, sometimes after a brief scalding, and dried on screens or in a slow oven until hard. The result keeps for a year or more and develops a concentrated, faintly toasted sweetness quite unlike fresh corn, which is why dried corn survived as a regional specialty in southeastern Pennsylvania long after the preservation need disappeared. Its appearance in a turn-of-the-century vegetable manual reflects a kitchen still organized around a pantry of dry stores and a stove with hot and cool zones, where a dish could be set at the back to look after itself for two hours.