Home › Breads, Biscuits, Etc. › Green Corn Griddle Cakes
Green Corn Griddle Cakes
One pint of grated corn, 1/2 cupful of milk, 1/2 cupful of flour, 1 scant tablespoonful of melted butter, 2 eggs, 1/4 teaspoonful of salt, a dash of pepper. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately, add the yolks to the corn, then the milk, flour and seasoning; beat well and stir in the whipped whites. Bake on a hot griddle.
A fresh-corn pancake with no chemical leavening at all — the lift comes entirely from beaten egg whites, so the batter has to be cooked as soon as it is mixed.
- "Green corn"This means fresh sweet corn in the milk stage, not a green variety and not cornmeal. A pint of grated kernels takes roughly 5 to 6 medium ears.
- Grating the cornNineteenth-century cooks split the kernel rows with a knife tip and scraped the pulp and milk out against the back of the blade, leaving the tough hulls on the cob. A box grater over a bowl does the same job; a food processor gives a wetter, less silky pulp, so drain off any excess liquid before measuring the milk.
- Butter and saltThe printed page gives 1 scant tablespoonful of melted butter and 1/4 teaspoonful of salt, as our text now reads. Either 1/4 or 1/2 teaspoon of salt suits the quantity of batter.
- The hingeThere is no baking powder here, so the whipped whites are the only leavening. Fold them in with a spatula, do not beat them in, and get the batter onto the griddle immediately — it deflates within a few minutes.
- Griddle heatThe recipe says a hot griddle, but moderate heat and a light greasing serve better. Corn pulp scorches faster than a plain flour batter, and these cakes need long enough for the starch in the kernels to cook through, so a screaming-hot pan gives you a burnt outside and a raw middle.
- Batter consistencySweet corn varies enormously in moisture. If the folded batter will not hold a soft mound on the spoon, add flour a tablespoon at a time rather than starting over.
- Yield and servingAbout a dozen 3-inch cakes, enough for three or four. Salt and pepper mark this as a savory side rather than a syrup pancake — it belongs beside ham, chicken or fried fish.
Grated green corn was one of the few genuinely seasonal luxuries in an American kitchen: for the few weeks when the ears were still milky, cooks turned them into fritters, puddings, oysters and griddle cakes, all built on the same trick of scraping pulp from the cob and binding it with egg. The technique is generally traced to Native American practice, which colonists adapted to the European frying pan and pancake batter. Corn was cheap and often homegrown, and half a cup each of milk and flour stretched it into a hot dish for a family without touching the meat budget. Such dishes became less prominent once canned corn made corn available year-round, though the flavor depends entirely on the corn being fresh.