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Creamed Corn
1 can corn 1 tablespoon flour 1 tablespoon butter 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 cup milk Heat the corn. Rub together the salt, butter and flour, add a little of the warm milk, then the remainder. Cook the sauce in a double boiler ten minutes, add to the corn, reheat, and serve.
A plain white sauce folded into canned corn. The only technical question is whether the sauce ever really thickens, and with the method as written it barely does.
- The canCanned corn of the period was commonly sold in a No. 2 can, roughly 2 1/2 cups or 20 oz net, somewhat larger than the modern 15-oz can; use one modern can and expect a slightly saucier result. Cream-style corn would make the added sauce redundant; use whole kernel.
- Thicken it properlyOne tablespoon of flour to a cup of milk gives a very thin sauce, and raw flour warmed in a double boiler thickens slowly and can taste pasty. Cook the butter and flour together in a saucepan for a minute or two before whisking in the milk, then simmer until it coats a spoon.
- Double boilerThe gentle heat was insurance against scorching milk on a coal range. On a modern burner set low, a heavy saucepan and a whisk do the job in three or four minutes rather than ten.
- SeasoningA quarter teaspoon of salt and nothing else is thin flavoring for four servings. Black or white pepper is standard, and a scrape of nutmeg is the traditional partner to a milk sauce of this kind.
- DrainingCanned corn liquor is starchy and slightly sweet. Drain it off before heating the corn, or the finished dish will be soupy; alternatively reduce it briefly and count it as part of the liquid.
- YieldMakes about 3 cups, serving four as a side dish.
The recipe is essentially corn dressed in a thin béchamel, the same sauce that carried creamed onions, creamed peas and creamed dried beef through the same decades; the technique was so universal that a book could assume its reader knew the proportions and only needed to be told which vegetable to fold in.