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Corn in Tomato Cups
To each pint of raw corn pulp add a high seasoning of salt and pepper and 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter. From large firm tomatoes cut off the stem end and scoop out the centers.
Fill with the prepared pulp, stand close together in a baking dish and bake for half an hour in a quick oven.
A simple stuffed-tomato dish that depends entirely on scraped fresh corn; the whole point is that the milky pulp thickens into a custard as it bakes.
- "Raw corn pulp" means scraped, not cutSplit the kernels down the row with a knife tip, then scrape the cob with the back of the blade to release the starchy milk. A pint takes roughly 4 to 6 large ears. Whole cut kernels, and certainly canned or frozen corn, will not set the same way and the filling stays loose.
- Quick ovenGenerally taken as somewhere around 400 to 450F. At that sort of heat the tomatoes should hold their shape for the half hour given; baked lower and slower they are more likely to slump.
- Butter and seasoningTwo tablespoons per pint still tastes right, since the corn milk needs fat to carry it. The recipe only says 'a high seasoning of salt and pepper'; about a teaspoon of salt and a generous quantity of pepper for the pint is one reasonable reading.
- Choosing and preparing the tomatoesLarge, firm, slightly underripe fruit works best. Salt the hollowed shells lightly and drain them upside down for ten minutes before filling, or the water they give up will thin the corn.
- Stand them close togetherThis is not incidental. Crowding the dish keeps the tomatoes propped upright and slows the loss of juice. A dish just big enough to hold them touching is the right one.
- Reserve the scooped centersThe recipe says nothing about them, but the pulp can be chopped and stirred into the corn, or spooned around the tomatoes in the dish to make a sauce.
- Doneness and yieldThe filling should be set and just browning on top; if it still trembles loosely, give it another five to ten minutes. A pint of pulp will fill roughly four to six of the large tomatoes the recipe calls for, enough for four to six as a side dish.
Corn scraped from the cob and baked in its own milk is a long-established American vegetable preparation, drawing on Native foodways, and it appears in printed cookbooks through the nineteenth century as corn pudding, corn oysters and stewed green corn. Presenting it in a hollowed tomato belongs to a later fashion: from roughly the 1890s through the 1920s, household books carried a good many vegetables served in edible cases, which made a plain mixture look like a course without adding much cost. Both corn and tomatoes are high-summer crops over much of the country and would have been at their cheapest and best at the same moment, which is a practical logic behind the pairing as much as any culinary one.