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Corn Soup (II)
Anonymous.
One quart of corn cut from the cob in three pints of water; when the grain is quite tender, mix with them two ounces of sweet butter rolled in a tablespoon of flour; let it boil fifteen minutes longer; just before taking up the soup, beat up an egg and stir in with pepper and salt.
A plain water-based corn soup thickened twice over, first with flour-and-butter and then with egg. The egg is the only step that can go wrong.
- Temper the eggBeat the egg with a ladleful of the hot soup before stirring it into the pot, and keep the soup below a simmer from that point on. Dropped straight into boiling liquid it sets into threads instead of thickening.
- QuantitiesThree pints is 6 cups of water. A quart of cut kernels is roughly 6 to 8 large ears, or about 1 1/4 lb of frozen kernels. Two ounces of sweet butter is 4 tablespoons; "sweet" means unsalted, as against the salted or slightly soured butter of the period.
- Cooking time for the cornOlder varieties were starchier than modern corn and would likely have wanted longer boiling. Modern supersweet hybrids are tender in 5 to 10 minutes, so judge by taste rather than the clock or the soup will be flat and starchy.
- The butter and flourButter rolled in flour is beurre manié. Work it to a smooth paste and add it in small pieces, stirring, so it disperses; a lump dropped in whole leaves a raw-flour core.
- Fifteen minutes after thickeningThat length is there to cook out the flour, and it is worth keeping. Five minutes is enough if you are pressed, but do not skip it entirely.
- Scrape the cobsAfter cutting the kernels, run the back of a knife down each cob to press out the milky starch, and simmer the bare cobs in the water for 15 minutes before adding the kernels. With no stock or milk in the recipe, that is where the body comes from.
- Seasoning and yieldSeasoning -- Water, corn, butter and egg need salt more than most soups; season at the end and taste twice.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from recipes contributed by local women and sold to raise money for the Home for the Friendless. Corn soup of this kind belongs to a distinctly American line: sweet corn was a New World crop taken up from Native American cultivation, and by the mid-nineteenth century improved sweet varieties were common enough in northern gardens that a summer soup of cut kernels needed no explanation to readers. The construction here water rather than stock, flour and butter for thickening, a beaten egg stirred in at the last moment is a familiar one in period household cookery, and the egg finish turns up in both English and American books of the era as a cheap way to give a thin soup richness.