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Beef and Corn Pudding
Open I can of corn, turn out and let drain as dry as possible (the liquid may be used in soup).
From 1 pound of lean beef trim off fat and gristle and put through the food chopper. In a saucepan brown 1 tablespoonful of butter, with 1 teaspoonful of chopped onion, add 1 tablespoonful of flour and brown again. Stir in gradually 1 cupful of strong beef stock and when smooth season with 1/2 of a teaspoonful of salt and a dash of paprika. Put the meat and corn in alternate layers in a baking dish, pour over them the sauce, seasoning each layer. Sprinkle over the top 1½ inch layer of Gruyere cheese, cover and place in a moderate oven. Uncover in half an hour and bake for twenty minutes longer.
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A thrift-era casserole built from a pound of ground beef, a can of corn and a cup of stock. Two things decide whether it works: the corn must be dry, and the raw beef needs to reach a safe temperature under the lid.
- Moderate ovenSet the oven to 350F. The dish goes in covered for 30 minutes, then uncovered for 20 more, so a total of about 50 minutes.
- The corn must be dryCanned corn carries a great deal of liquid, and this pudding has no eggs or crumbs to absorb it. Drain in a sieve and press gently; the saved liquid is genuinely useful in a soup or in place of some of the stock.
- Can sizesPeriod canned corn came in several sizes, so the original quantity is uncertain; a common can of the era drained down to somewhere near 2 cups. A modern 15-ounce can gives roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups drained, so a can and a half will come closer to the original proportion of corn to meat than two full cans.
- Food chopperThis is a hand-cranked meat grinder. Grind trimmed lean chuck or round yourself on a coarse plate, or buy coarse ground beef; ordinary fine supermarket mince packs denser and gives a more solid, less pudding-like layer.
- Strong beef stock"Strong" means reduced and well flavoured, not a thin broth. Reduce a good stock by a third, or use stock plus a spoonful of glace; the sauce is the only moisture binding the dish.
- The cheese measurementThe printed page was checked, and the layer of Gruyere is the depth our text now gives. In practice this means a generous handful of grated cheese, about 3 to 4 ounces, sprinkled over the top.
- DonenessThe beef goes in raw and cooks in the covered dish. Check the centre with a thermometer before serving; ground beef wants 160F, and the layered arrangement heats more slowly than a browned mixture would.
- YieldA pound of beef and one or two cans of corn fills a 1 1/2-quart dish and serves four with bread and a green vegetable.
Recipes like this belong to the American economy cookery of the early twentieth century, when a pound of beef was stretched with a canned vegetable and a flour-thickened brown sauce to feed a family. The word "pudding" here carries its older, savoury sense: a soft baked dish set in layers, closer to a scalloped casserole than to anything sweet. Canned sweet corn was among the cheaper and more widely available tinned goods on American shelves by this date, and the instruction to save the packing liquid for soup is one this recipe shares with other thrift cookery of the period. The Gruyere topping is the one small extravagance.