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Indian Maize, Boiled
INGREDIENTS.-The ears of young green Indian maize or wheat to every 1/2 gallon of water, allow 1 heaped tablespoonful of salt.
Take off the outside sheath and the fibres, and put the corn into boiling water, when tender, drain, and serve on toast with melted butter.
TIME.-25 minutes to boil.
SEASONABLE in autumn.
A Victorian recipe for corn on the cob, and the one thing to change is the clock.
- Twenty-five minutes is far too longTwenty-five minutes is far longer than modern practice. The recipe calls for "young green" ears, and modern sweet corn, bred for tender kernels and high sugar, needs only three to five minutes in boiling water; long boiling dulls the sweetness and firms the kernels.
- "Indian maize or wheat"Both names mean the same plant. Maize was called Indian corn or Indian wheat in British books to distinguish it from "corn" in the older English sense, which meant grain generally and wheat in particular. No actual wheat is involved.
- Half a gallon of waterTwo quarts. As a British measure this is the imperial gallon, so roughly 2.3 litres, with a heaped tablespoon of salt. Use enough water to cover the ears freely; scale the salt with the volume rather than the number of ears, as the recipe does.
- Salting the waterSalt at this rate seasons the kernels without toughening them. Some cooks now prefer unsalted water with a spoonful of sugar, which suits corn that has sat a few days and lost sweetness.
- Sheath and fibresHusk and silk. Strip the husk, rub off the silk with a dry cloth or a stiff brush, and trim the stalk end so the ears sit flat in the pan.
- Serving on toastThe recipe says only to drain the corn and serve it on toast with melted butter; it does not specify whether the ears go on whole or the kernels are cut off. Whole ears served in the hand, with butter and salt at the table, is the same dish with less ceremony.
- SeasonAn autumn date suits maize ripening late in a cool climate. The useful rule is hours rather than months: sugar begins converting to starch as soon as the ear is picked, so cook the same day if you can.
- YieldAllow one to two ears per person as a first course or vegetable, increasing the water and salt in proportion so the ears are covered.
Maize reached Europe from the Americas in the decades after 1492, but for a long time Britain treated it as fodder and famine food rather than a vegetable, which may be why an English household book gives it barely three lines while American writers of the same period wrote at length about green corn. The name records that history: "Indian corn" and "Indian wheat" marked it as a foreign grain, since "corn" on its own then meant whatever grain a region grew, usually wheat in England. The instruction to serve it on toast with melted butter treats it as an English garden vegetable in the manner of asparagus or seakale, and the note that it is seasonable in autumn would suit maize ripening late in a cool climate rather than the high-summer glut familiar today.