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Grated Corn
Place the necessary number of ears of Indian corn in a saucepan and boil them. Grate off the cob, add a little butter, salt and cream, put the mixture into a dish, and serve like a vegetable.
A two-line recipe that assumes a cook who has done it before. The one thing worth knowing is that boiling first and grating second is backwards by modern practice.
- Indian cornSimply maize — sweet corn on the cob. In 1896 "Indian corn" distinguished it from wheat, which older English usage called corn.4 to 6 ears serves four as a side dish.
- Boil brieflyFresh sweet corn needs only 3 to 5 minutes in boiling water. The recipe says merely 'boil them' and gives no time. Nineteenth-century sweet corn varieties were starchier and less sugary than modern supersweet hybrids, which are tender enough to eat raw.
- Grate raw insteadGrating cooked kernels off the cob is awkward and slippery. Grate the raw ears on the coarse side of a box grater, or split the kernels with a knife tip and scrape out the pulp with the back of the blade, then cook the pulp gently in the butter and cream for 5 to 8 minutes.
- Scrape the cobAfter grating, run the knife down the stripped cob to press out the remaining milky liquid. That starchy corn milk is what thickens the dish and it is most of the reason to grate rather than cut whole kernels.
- Butter, salt and creamThe original gives no amounts. For 6 ears, start with 2 tablespoons butter, 1/4 cup heavy cream and 1/2 teaspoon salt, and adjust — the corn will absorb more cream than expected.
- Do not boil the creamKeep the pan below a simmer once the cream goes in. Hard boiling makes it separate and dulls the fresh corn flavor the dish exists for.
- Serving"Serve like a vegetable" means as a plain side, hot, in a warmed dish, presumably to accompany a meat course rather than to stand on its own.
Grated or scraped corn belongs to an American home tradition much older than the Waldorf-Astoria, and it appears here in Oscar Tschirky's book alongside its banquet cookery. Scraping the pulp from the cob was one common way to handle corn once the kernels had gone past the tender milk stage, and it is the same technique behind corn pudding, corn oysters and the dish often called corn fritters. Nineteenth-century sweet corn was harvested and eaten within hours because its sugars converted to starch quickly — the modern supersweet varieties that hold their sugar for days were not developed until the twentieth century, which is why period recipes press so hard on freshness.