Home › Vegetables › Deviled Corn
Deviled Corn
2 tablespoons butter or savory fat 2 tablespoons flour 1 1/2 cups milk 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon mustard Paprika 2 cups corn pulp (fresh or canned) 1 egg 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce Crums Make a sauce of the fat, flour and seasonings, add corn, egg slightly beaten, and Worcestershire sauce. Pour into a baking-dish, cover with crums mixed with a little butter or butter substitute and bake until crums are brown.
A white-sauce corn pudding sharpened with mustard and Worcestershire, baked under a buttered crumb crust. The original gives neither temperature nor time, so the notes below fill those in.
- Oven and timingBake at 350F for 25 to 35 minutes in a shallow buttered dish, until the centre is set and the crumbs are well browned. If the top colours before the custard firms, cover loosely with foil for the last ten minutes.
- "Crums"Simply breadcrumbs, an older spelling. Dry or lightly toasted fresh crumbs both work; toss about half a cup with a tablespoon of melted butter so they brown evenly rather than scorching in patches.
- Corn pulpKernels scored down the middle and scraped from the cob, so you get the milky interior and leave the tough hulls behind. Two cups is roughly four to six ears, or about a can and a half of 15-oz corn, drained and pulsed briefly.
- MustardAlmost certainly dry mustard powder rather than prepared mustard, given the small dry measure, though the recipe says only "mustard." A quarter teaspoon is mild; the "deviled" character comes as much from the Worcestershire and paprika, and the dish takes a half teaspoon comfortably.
- Savory fat and butter substitutePeriod shorthand for bacon drippings, rendered poultry fat, or margarine. Bacon fat suits this dish particularly well; butter is the default.
- The eggLet the white sauce cool for a minute or two before beating in the egg, or it will set in threads. The egg is what turns the sauce into a pudding rather than creamed corn.
- PaprikaListed without a quantity. A quarter teaspoon in the sauce and a dusting over the crumbs is in keeping.
- YieldAbout four side servings, or three as a light supper dish with a salad.
"Deviled" in American cookery of this period meant nothing more sinister than sharply seasoned food, usually with mustard, cayenne or paprika and often Worcestershire sauce, the same logic that gives us deviled eggs and deviled ham. Applying the treatment to corn belongs to a broad family of early twentieth-century corn puddings and scallops, in which a basic white sauce carried a vegetable into the oven under crumbs. New Delineator Recipes came out of The Delineator, the Butterick pattern company's household magazine, and the recipe accepts fresh or canned corn without comment at a time when canned corn was cheap and available year-round while fresh corn was a short summer season. The offer of "savory fat" and "butter substitute" alongside butter is characteristic of the period's household economy, when drippings were saved and margarine was widely available.