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Roasted Corn
Remove the silks and husks from one dozen ears of corn, rub them with butter, season with pepper and salt, lay them in a drippingpan, and place the pan as close as possible to a clear hot fire. Turn the ears now and then, and change their position in the pan so that all may cook evenly. When they are browned, serve hot.
A short recipe that assumes a coal range with an open, radiant fire. The whole technique is dry, direct heat and frequent turning; translated to a modern kitchen it is a broiler or a grill, not a closed oven.
- "As close as possible to a clear hot fire"A clear fire is one burned down past smoke to steady radiant heat. The modern equivalent is a broiler with the rack set 3-4 inches below the element, or a grill over medium-hot coals. A conventional oven at 450F will cook the corn but will not brown it the way this recipe intends.
- DrippingpanA shallow rectangular metal pan that sat under roasting meat. Any heavy rimmed sheet pan or roasting pan works; the low sides matter, since tall sides shade the ears from the heat.
- TimingThe original gives none. Expect roughly 10-15 minutes under a broiler or over coals, turning every few minutes until the kernels are spotted brown and glossy. Corn is edible raw, so the only question is colour and heat, not doneness.
- Husks off, not onNote that Oscar strips the husks entirely rather than roasting in the leaves. This produces browning and a faintly toasted flavour rather than steaming, which is the whole point of the dish. Do not leave the husks on.
- Buttering before the heatButter applied first will smoke and darken. Clarified butter or a neutral oil for the roasting, with fresh butter at the table, gives the same result without the burnt-milk-solid taste.
- Corn has changedOlder sweet corn varieties converted their sugar to starch quickly after picking, often within a day, which is why freshness mattered so much. Modern supersweet varieties hold their sugar for days and may caramelise more readily, so watch for scorching.
- YieldA dozen ears serves six to twelve depending on whether corn is the vegetable course or a side. Season after roasting as well; salt applied at the start draws moisture to the surface.
Oscar Tschirky, who ran the Waldorf's dining rooms without ever formally being its chef, published his cookbook in 1896, and it is a curious hybrid: continental hotel cookery sitting beside plainly American items like this one. Roasted corn belongs to the second category. Corn eaten fresh on the cob was long treated in Europe as animal fodder or peasant food, and American cooks had to argue for it; roasting ears in the ashes or before an open fire is generally traced to Native American practice, adopted early by colonists. Its inclusion here, in a book aimed at a fashionable New York readership, is a small sign of how confidently native American vegetables had moved into the formal repertoire by the end of the century.