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Corn, Boiled
To have this delicious vegetable in perfection, the husks should be left on until just before cooking and then, when husked, the corn should be plunged into boiling water. Cook from five to eight minutes, according to the size of the corn. Do not salt the cooking water, as this toughens the corn. Lay onehalf table napkin or a corn napkin on the serving plate. Pile the corn up on this in a pyramid, enwrap it with the remaining length of the napkin and send it to the table. When boiled in the husk, drain the corn well before serving, and break each cob from the stem; send to the table in the napkin, but do not remove the husks.
A short entry that gets the essentials right: fresh corn, hard-boiling water, and a very short cooking time. Two details deserve comment.
- The timing still holdsFive to eight minutes suits the older sweet-corn varieties of the period, which were starchier than today's. Modern supersweet hybrids are often tender in three to five minutes; taste a kernel rather than watching the clock.
- Husk on until the last minuteThis is the hinge of the recipe. Corn starts converting sugar to starch the moment it is picked, and the husk slows moisture loss. Refrigerate unhusked ears and shuck them beside the pot.
- The salt warningThe book's claim that salted water toughens corn is not borne out in modern practice. What genuinely toughens kernels is overcooking. Some cooks add a little sugar or milk to the water instead; neither is necessary with good corn.
- Boiled in the huskThe second method is closer to steaming: whole unhusked ears go into the water and take longer, roughly eight to twelve minutes depending on size. The silk pulls away cleanly with the husk at the table.
- The corn napkinA folded linen napkin lining the serving dish absorbs drips and holds heat. Any clean tea towel does the same job; the pyramid presentation is optional.
- QuantityReckon on two ears a person as a side dish, and use a pan wide enough that the ears sit in a single layer so the water returns to the boil quickly.
Corn on the cob was for a long time regarded in polite American dining as a slightly awkward dish, delicious but hard to eat elegantly, and the elaborate napkin business here may be a response to that anxiety as much as to any cooking problem. Butterick, a pattern and magazine company writing for aspiring middle-class households, took table presentation seriously, and the effect here is to make the ears look deliberate: piled up, wrapped in linen, carried in whole. The insistence on husking at the last moment reflects a real constraint of the period, when sweet corn came from a nearby market garden or the kitchen garden itself and was eaten the same day; sugar loss after picking was obvious to anyone who waited. Refrigerated transport and, later in the twentieth century, the supersweet hybrids bred to hold their sugar have blunted that urgency without making the advice wrong.