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Baked Peppers and Corn
Score and scrape from the cobs enough raw corn to make 1 pint. Open 2 sweet green peppers, remove seeds and white veins and shave very fine. Put corn and peppers in a buttered baking dish, seasoning with salt. Pour over the top 1 cupful of thin cream with which has been mixed I beaten egg and 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Bake for forty minutes in a quick oven.
A corn custard in all but name, and it behaves like one. The two things worth attention are how the corn is cut and how hard the oven is pushed.
- Scoring and scrapingRun a knife tip down the centre of each row of kernels, then scrape the cob with the back of the blade. This releases the starchy milk and pulp while leaving the tough kernel hulls behind, which is what gives the dish its body. Simply cutting kernels off whole will give a looser, waterier result.
- How much cornA pint of scraped corn takes roughly four to six medium ears, depending on size and season. Frozen corn will not substitute directly, since the milk is what thickens the custard.
- Thin creamPeriod "thin cream" meant something in the range of today's half-and-half to light cream; the figures vary from source to source. Heavy cream will make the dish noticeably rich and dense; whole milk gives a softer set.
- Sweet green peppersThese are ordinary unripe bell peppers. Two medium ones shaved very fine is right; cut them thicker and they stay crunchy against a soft custard.
- The ovenA "quick oven" is generally reckoned at about 400-425F, which is hot for an egg-and-cream mixture. At that heat the custard may curdle and weep before forty minutes are up. Baking at 350F for the same time, or setting the dish in a pan of hot water, gives a smoother set.
- Judging donenessThe centre should be just barely set with a slight wobble, and a knife inserted an inch from the edge should come out clean. Carry-over heat finishes it as it stands.
- SeasoningSalt is the only seasoning called for. A little black pepper and a scrape of nutmeg are traditional with corn custards and do not change the character of the dish.
- YieldFills a 1-quart baking dish and serves four as a side, or two or three as the main part of a meatless supper.
Scraped-corn puddings and custards run right through nineteenth and early twentieth century American cookery. The pulp and milk pressed from a scored cob carry starch that thickens on heating, which — together with the egg — is what makes a substantial dish out of very little else. A pint of corn, two peppers, one egg and a cup of thin cream feed a family, and in late summer the corn and peppers would both have been at their cheapest, straight from a garden or a market glut. Corn-and-pepper mixtures of this kind appear in Southern and Creole cookery as well.