No. 2730

Corn on the Cob-Boiled

Mais Bouilli en Tige

Select white and close-grained corn; open the husks without tearing, and remove the silk found between these and the corn; brush over, and close up the husks, tying them at the ends, or remove them entirely form the stalk end, either way being optional, then cut the stalks off straight at both ends. Boil them in water, to which add a quarter as much milk and salt. They take about twenty to twenty-five minutes to cook. Dress in a napkin, serving butter at the same time.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's method is sound in outline, but the timing belongs to the corn of the 1890s, not to the sweet hybrids sold today.

The timing is the hingeTwenty to twenty-five minutes will reduce modern supersweet or sugar-enhanced corn to mush and drive off its sugar. Fresh sweet corn needs three to five minutes in boiling water; older, starchier ears may take seven or eight.
"White and close-grained"The white table corns of his day were less sugary than modern hybrids and were reckoned to turn starchy soon after picking; how much of the long boiling that explains is guesswork. Any fresh sweet corn, white or yellow, works here.
The milkA quarter as much milk as water is a real ratio, not a flourish: roughly 1 cup milk to 4 cups water. It lends a faint sweetness. Even diluted milk can catch on the bottom of the pan, so keep the heat at a steady boil and watch it.
Salting the waterThe recipe salts the water itself. The old warning that salt toughens kernels is kitchen lore rather than anything demonstrated; season lightly in any case, since butter and table salt follow.
Husk-on or husk-offOne of the two methods he offers, "brush over, and close up the husks," means cleaning the silk out, folding the husk back over the ear and tying it; he says explicitly that either way is optional. This steams the corn in its own leaves.
"Cut the stalks off straight at both ends"The recipe does not say why; trimming both ends flat would let the ears sit squarely. "En tige" in the French title is literally "on the stalk."
Dressing in a napkinA folded linen napkin on the serving dish absorbs steam and keeps the ears hot at table. It is service, not cookery, and a warmed platter does the same job.
YieldThe original gives none. Figure one to two ears per person as a vegetable course.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer spent more than thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the whole of that kitchen, from consommes to the mechanics of a ball supper. Corn on the cob is one of the frankly American entries in a book otherwise built on French practice, and it sits in the vegetable chapters alongside succotash and corn pancakes. The French title he gives it, mais bouilli en tige, is the kind of translation-in-reverse that runs through the book: an American vegetable dressed in the language of the profession. The insistence on white, close-grained ears reflects the market of the period, when sweet corn was seasonal, local, and lost its sugar to starch within a day of picking.