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Mashed Corn
Wash and drain about one quart of fresh corn cut from the cob, put it into a saucepan with two quarts of boiling water, a bunch of thyme, two or three small onions, one carrot, two or three cloves, and salt and pepper to taste. Boil the corn until tender, then pour it onto a fine wire sieve, remove the onions, thyme, parsley, carrot and cloves. Return the corn to the saucepan with a small quantity of rich broth and two ounces of butter, and stir all together over the fire for a few minutes. Serve the puree very hot.
A vegetable puree in the French style, built on aromatics that are all discarded before serving. Two things in the text need attention: the corn is never actually mashed anywhere in the instructions, and the boiling time reflects starchier field corn than what you will buy today.
- Quantity of cornA quart of cut kernels is roughly 1 1/4 lb, which means five to six large ears. Frozen corn works, though you lose the milky starch that gives the puree body.
- Do the mashingThe title promises mashed corn and the last line calls it a puree, but no step tells you to break the kernels down. After draining, pass the corn through a food mill or ricer, or pulse it in a processor and press it through a sieve if you want the hulls out.
- Boil far less than implied"Boil until tender" was written for a starchier, less sugary corn than what is sold now, and period recipes generally assume a long boil. Modern supersweet varieties are done in 5 to 8 minutes and turn flat and starchy past that.
- The missing parsleyParsley is listed among the things to remove but never among the things to add. Put a few stems in with the thyme bunch at the start.
- Whole clovesStick them into one of the onions so they are easy to find and lift out; loose cloves hide in a quart of kernels.
- "Rich broth"A concentrated chicken or veal stock, and only a small quantity, perhaps 1/4 cup. You are loosening a puree, not making soup. Add it a spoonful at a time.
- Butter and seasoningTwo ounces is four tablespoons, generous for this volume and the point of the dish. Stir it in off a hard boil so it emulsifies rather than splits, and correct the salt at the end, since the cooking water carries most of the first seasoning away.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; roughly four to six as a side dish.
Oscar Tschirky's book is full of these plain American ingredients handled by classical French method: the corn is cooked with thyme, onion, carrot and clove, the aromatics are strained out and thrown away, and what reaches the table is a smooth buttered puree. That treatment of a vegetable as something to be sieved and enriched rather than simply boiled and served is the hotel kitchen's habit, and it is why a dish this simple gets a saucepan of aromatics all to itself. What marks the Waldorf version is the two ounces of butter and the spoonfuls of strong broth, both signs of a kitchen with stock always at hand.