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Corn Off the Cob
Corn is frequently cut from the cob after it is cooked and served in milk or butter; but by this method much of the flavor and juice of the corn itself is wasted. It is better to cut the corn from the cob before cooking. With a sharp knife cut off the grains, not cutting closely enough to remove any of the woody portion of the skins. Then with a knife press out all the pulp and milk remaining in the cob; add this to the corn; season well with salt, pepper and butter; add a little more milk if the corn is dry; cook, preferably in the oven, for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally. If the oven is not hot, cook over the fire.
A method more than a formula: the point is to capture the corn's own liquid rather than boil it away. Everything else is seasoning.
- The hingeScrape the stripped cobs with a knife to press out the starchy "milk" and add it to the kernels. That liquid is what thickens the dish and keeps it from being loose kernels in butter.
- Cutting depthShave off the upper part of each kernel, then scrape. Cutting down to the cob brings up the tough hull bases the recipe warns against, and the texture turns fibrous.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the recipe's own fallback ("If the oven is not hot, cook over the fire") suggests it assumed whatever oven was already going. A moderate oven, somewhere around 350-400F, will do for the ten minutes stated; stir once or twice, as the recipe directs, so the edges do not set.
- "Over the fire"Stovetop, in a heavy pan over medium heat. Ten minutes is ample, and at that point the kernels should still have some snap.
- Modern corn is sweeterToday's supersweet and sugar-enhanced hybrids hold their sugar for days after picking, unlike the sweet corn of this book's period, and their cob "milk" tends to be thinner. You will likely need less of the extra milk, or none at all.
- Milk quantity"A little more milk if the corn is dry" means a few tablespoons for six ears, not a cup. The scraped cob pulp should do most of the work.
- YieldSix to eight ears gives roughly four to five cups of cut corn, enough for four to six as a side. Butter to taste, roughly a tablespoon per four ears.
Cutting corn from the cob before cooking is the older American practice; boiled whole ears at table were, by some accounts, once considered rustic. The insistence on scraping the cob reflects what seems to have been a real economy of the period, when sweet corn was a brief high-summer crop and the starchy "milk" was understood as the best part of it. The same scraping step underlies related dishes of the era, from corn oysters to the thickened cream-style corn that later went into cans.