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Cream of Corn Soup
One can corn; one quart and one-half pint of milk; three tablespoons of butter; two tablespoons of flour; one teaspoon salt; one-fourth teaspoon pepper; yolks of two eggs. Put the corn in a bowl and mash it fine as possible, then put in a double boiler with one quart of milk and cook for twenty minutes; put the butter in a frying pan and cook slowly for five minutes, then add the flour, cook until it becomes frothy, but do not burn; then add to the milk and corn; add salt and pepper and cook five minutes. Rub the soup through a strainer, beat the yolks of the eggs well and add to them one-half pint of cold milk; stir this mixture into the soup, cook for a minute or two, stirring constantly.
A straightforward velouté-style corn soup finished with an egg liaison. The only real hazard is curdling at the end.
- The hinge: the egg finishOnce the yolk-and-milk mixture goes in, the soup must not boil. Keep it below a simmer and stir constantly for the minute or two called for; if it reaches a full boil the yolks will scramble and the soup will go grainy.
- Milk quantityOne quart plus one-half pint is 5 cups total, of which a half pint (1 cup) is held back cold for the yolks. Whole milk gives the intended body.
- The can of cornCanned goods of this period were not sold to today's sizes, and cans of corn may well have held more than a modern 15-oz can. About 2 cups of kernels (roughly one and a half 15-oz cans, or the same volume of frozen corn) suits the quantity of milk here.
- Mashing and strainingThe mashing and later straining are doing the work a blender now does in fifteen seconds. Purée the cooked corn and milk, then still pass it through a sieve; corn hulls do not break down and are unpleasant in a cream soup.
- Cooking the butterThe five minutes of slow cooking before the flour goes in will drive off water; the recipe's own limits are 'until it becomes frothy' and 'do not burn', so stop well short of a toasted colour.
- Double boilerA double boiler prevents scorched milk. A heavy-bottomed saucepan over low heat works if you stir; the 20-minute cook is about softening the corn, not reducing.
- YieldAbout six cups of finished soup.
Cream of corn soup belongs to a broader American fashion for "cream of" soups in household cookery of the later nineteenth century, when canned vegetables and cheap wheat flour made a thickened milk base an everyday matter. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, issued its cook book to much the same middle-class readership, and this soup is of that kind: built from a tin, a roux and a quart of milk. The egg-yolk liaison at the end is an older, French-derived technique for enriching and lightly binding a soup, in use well before roux-thickening became common.