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To Dry Corn (Remove the husks score down)
Remove the husks, score down the centre of each row of grains, then press out the pulp, leaving every particle of hull fast to the cob. Spread this pulp on tin sheets or in ordinary baking pans; dry in the hot sun or in a very moderate oven, watching carefully and stirring occasionally that the corn may not lose its color. If the oven is just right three hours should dry it. As soon as it is thoroughly dry take from the oven, and when cold put it into bags and hang in a cool, dry place.
This is a preserving method rather than a dish: sweet corn at the milk stage, pressed off the cob and dried down to a shelf-stable state. The hinge is dryness — corn that feels dry but is not will mould in the bag.
- "Score down the centre of each row"Run a knife tip down each row of kernels to split them, then scrape the cob with the back of the knife or a spoon so the pulp and milk come away and the tough hulls stay behind. This is why dried corn made this way rehydrates tender instead of leathery.
- Corn at the right stageUse sweet corn in the milk stage, when a punctured kernel gives thick white liquid rather than clear juice or dough. Over-mature corn dries starchy and never softens properly.
- "A very moderate oven"Period oven names are not fixed, but 'very moderate' points to a slow oven, somewhere in the region of 250-300F, which is why the corn needs watching and stirring. Modern drying practice runs lower and longer -- around 140F in an oven propped open or a dehydrator -- for better colour and less scorching, and will take considerably longer than three hours.
- Blanching, which the original omitsCurrent preserving guidance is to blanch the ears in boiling water 4–5 minutes before cutting, which sets the milk and stops the enzymes that dull colour and flavour in storage. The book's stirring is doing the colour job the hard way.
- Judging "thoroughly dry"Properly dried corn is brittle and hard, rattles on the pan, and shatters rather than dents when pressed with a fingernail. Any pliable, sticky pieces mean it goes back in.
- StorageCloth bags in a cool dry place worked in an unheated pantry; in a modern kitchen use airtight jars. Let it stand loosely covered a day or two first, shaking daily, so any residual moisture equalises — if condensation appears inside the jar, dry it further. Freezing the jars is the surest long-term option.
- Yield and useA dozen good ears will reduce to something on the order of a cup of dried corn, depending on the ears. To use, cover with water or milk and soak an hour or more, then simmer until tender -- half an hour or longer -- and finish with butter, salt and pepper or fold it into a chowder.
Drying green corn is one of the oldest North American preserving methods, practised long before the arrival of Europeans and taken up by colonial and later farm households as a way to carry summer sweet corn through winter without a cellar or a canner. It belongs to the same broad family as Pennsylvania Dutch dried corn, the style commercialised in Lancaster County and still sold there, though that tradition is usually described as involving roasting or parching the ears first, which gives a toasty, caramelised flavour the plain oven-dried version lacks. Recipes like this one are common in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century vegetable books because home drying was cheap, needed no equipment beyond baking pans and sunshine, and predated reliable home canning of low-acid vegetables -- which is why a cookbook of this vintage treats a bag of dried corn as ordinary pantry stock.