Home › Vegetables › Corn à la Southern
Corn à la Southern
To one can chopped corn add two eggs slightly beaten, one teaspoon salt, one-eighth teaspoon pepper, one and onehalf tablespoons melted butter, and one pint scalded milk; turn into a buttered pudding-dish and bake in slow oven until firm.
A plain baked corn custard, and like any custard it lives or dies by oven temperature. The batter is thin when it goes in; it sets as the eggs coagulate.
- Slow ovenRead this as 300-325F. Anything hotter curdles the custard and weeps liquid into the dish. Figure 50-60 minutes for a 1 1/2-quart dish, until the centre barely jiggles and a knife slid in comes out clean.
- A water bath helpsThe recipe does not call for one, but setting the pudding dish in a roasting pan of hot water reaching halfway up the sides guards the custard against the harder, drier heat of a modern oven.
- "One can chopped corn"Can sizes were not standardised, but a period can of corn held somewhere in the region of two to two and a half cups of kernels with their liquid. A modern 15-oz can of whole kernel corn, undrained and pulsed a few times in a processor, is a reasonable stand-in. Cream-style corn is sweeter and thicker than what seems to be meant here.
- Scalded milkHeat the pint to just below a simmer, when bubbles ring the pan. Scalding was routine in period recipes for raw milk, whatever the reason given at the time; with pasteurised milk it still shortens baking time and dissolves the salt evenly. Add it to the eggs in a slow stream so they do not scramble.
- Pudding-dishA shallow earthenware or glass baking dish of about 1 1/2 quarts. Shallow is better than deep, since the custard sets from the outside in.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt for a pint of milk plus a can of corn is on the light side by current taste if the corn is unsalted, and about right if it is packed with salt. Taste the liquid before it goes into the dish.
- YieldServes four to six as a side dish. It is best warm rather than hot, and firms up considerably as it cools.
Corn puddings of this kind run through American cookery from the eighteenth century onward, and Fannie Farmer's title gestures at regional origin rather than claiming any particular Southern kitchen. What makes this version distinctly of its moment is the can: the Boston Cooking School book appeared as commercially canned corn had become cheap and reliable, and Farmer, who taught a scientific, standardised approach to cooking, was quite willing to build a recipe around a tin. The technique itself is nothing but a savoury baked custard, eggs and milk applied to a vegetable.