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Deviled Corn
Melt four tablespoons butter; add five tablespoons flour; one and one-half cups milk; one and one-half teaspoons salt; three-quarters teaspoon mustard, and a little paprika; cook until thickened, add one can corn, one egg, three teaspoons table sauce; fill buttered scallop shells, cover with buttered cracker crumbs, and bake until crumbs are brown.
A white-sauce corn gratin, thick enough to hold its shape in a shell. The proportions are sound; only the vessel, the can size and the missing oven temperature need translating.
- Set the oven at 400FThe original gives no temperature; the baking is mainly to brown the crumbs, though the egg stirred in off the heat still needs to set. Twelve to eighteen minutes at 400F.
- "Table sauce" means bottled brown sauceIn 1911 this is a commercial condiment of the Worcestershire or Harvey's type, sold by the bottle for the sideboard. Worcestershire is the closest thing on a modern shelf; three teaspoons is about a tablespoon.
- The mustard is dryThree-quarters of a teaspoon of powdered mustard, not prepared. Prepared mustard in that quantity adds vinegar and thins the sauce; if you use it, allow a scant tablespoon and expect a sharper result.
- Can sizes have shrunkA standard can of corn then held about 20 ounces including liquid; today's is about 15 ounces, draining to roughly 11. About 2 cups of drained kernels gets you near the ratio of corn to sauce the recipe intends.
- Temper the eggThe egg goes into a sauce that has already thickened over heat. Beat it, stir a few spoonfuls of the hot mixture into it, then return it all to the pan off the heat — added straight it will scramble in threads.
- Scallop shells, or anything shallowDeep natural shells were common table service; ramekins, gratin dishes or a single shallow 1-quart baking dish all work. Shallow matters more than the shape, since the browning of the crumb top is the whole finish.
- Buttered crumbsToss coarse cracker crumbs with melted butter — about 2 tablespoons butter to a cup of crumbs — before they go on. Dry crumbs scorch at the edges and stay pale in the middle.
- YieldEnough to fill six shells, or four as a lunch dish with bread and a salad.
"Deviled" in American cookbooks of this period signals sharp seasoning generally — mustard, paprika and a bottled sauce, the same trio that makes deviled eggs and deviled ham, though cayenne and other hot seasonings were common too. The Butterick Cook Book (1911) came from the pattern company that published the Delineator, and its vegetable chapter reflects a kitchen that had come to rely on canned goods: corn was among the first vegetables canned successfully at scale in the United States, and by 1911 a can of it was an ordinary pantry staple rather than a novelty. Serving the mixture in scallop shells was a genteel touch borrowed from fish cookery — the shells were sold as reusable tableware, and the same recipe framework, sauce plus filling plus buttered crumbs, appears throughout the era under the name "scalloped."