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Corn Soufflé
1 tablespoon butter or savory
Pepper fat
I pimiento
1 tablespoon flour
2 cups corn pulp (fresh or
½ cup milk canned)
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
¼ teaspoon paprika
Make a white sauce, using the fat, flour, milk and seasoning. Rub the pimiento through a sieve and add it to the sauce. Add the corn to the mixture. Cool slightly, then add the well-beaten egg-yolks and fold in the stiffly beaten egg-whites. Turn into a greased baking-dish, set the dish in a pan of hot water, and bake in a moderate oven until the egg is set, about thirty minutes.
The ingredient column has come through the scanner interleaved with the method, but the list resolves cleanly: 1 tablespoon butter or savory fat, 1 tablespoon flour, ½ cup milk, 1 teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon paprika, pepper, 1 pimiento, 2 cups corn pulp (fresh or canned), 2 eggs.
- The hingeCool the white sauce to warm before the yolks go in, and fold the whites in with a light hand at the last moment. Hot sauce scrambles the yolks, and overmixing after the whites are added is what turns this into a dense corn pudding rather than a soufflé.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven is usually taken as somewhere around 350-375F. The water bath keeps the custard from curdling at the edges; use a deep pan and pour in hot water to come partway up the dish.
- Corn pulpFresh means grating or splitting the kernels and scraping the cobs to get the milky pulp — roughly 6 to 8 ears for 2 cups. From a can, cream-style corn is the closest match; whole-kernel corn works but should be pulsed briefly so the mixture is not all skins.
- PimientoA jarred whole pimiento or roasted red pepper, drained and pushed through a sieve. It is there for color and a faint sweetness, not heat; a fresh red bell pepper roasted and peeled does the same job.
- Savory fatThe period alternative to butter is meat drippings, such as bacon or ham fat. It changes the character of the dish considerably and is worth trying if you want something less delicate.
- Timing and donenessThirty minutes suits a shallow dish. In a deeper one allow 40 to 50 minutes and test with a knife near the center: it should come out clean, with the top puffed and just set. Serve straight from the oven, as it will sink within a few minutes.
- YieldFour servings as a side dish, two as a light supper with bread and a salad.
Corn puddings are long-established in American cookbooks, with separated-egg corn soufflés appearing alongside them from the later nineteenth century onward, the difference being whether the whites were beaten and folded in. The pimiento is a period marker: canned Spanish pimientos became widely available in the United States in the early twentieth century after growers in Georgia began producing them domestically, and cookbooks of the 1910s and 1920s reach for them often whenever a pale dish needs a spot of red.