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Corn Soup
Mrs. W. P. Nixon.
One small beef bone, two quarts of water; four tomatoes, eight ears of corn; let the meat boil a short time in the water ; cut the corn from the cob and put in the cobs with the cut corn and tomatoes; let it boil about half an hour; remove the cobs; just before serving add milk, which allow to boil for a few moments only ; season with salt and pepper.
A late-summer soup that depends entirely on fresh corn, cobs included. The instructions are terse in the manner of a recipe dictated by one cook to another, and two of the timings need rethinking.
- The hinge: adding the milkTomato acid plus a hard boil is very likely to curdle the milk. Take the soup off the heat, temper the milk by stirring a ladle of hot broth into it first, then return it and warm through without boiling. The original's "boil for a few moments" is the line most likely to ruin the dish.
- "Boil a short time" is not enoughA beef bone gives up its gelatin and flavour over two to three hours, not a few minutes. Simmer the bone in the two quarts first, skim, and strain before the vegetables go in; then follow the half-hour corn timing as written.
- QuantitiesEight ears yields roughly 4 to 6 cups of kernels depending on size. The recipe does not say what size tomatoes; four medium ones run about 1 to 1 1/2 lb. Peel them if you object to slipped skins in the bowl. Two quarts of water will reduce, so expect 6 to 8 servings as a first course.
- The cobsSimmering the stripped cobs does real work here. They release starch and a sweet, milky corn flavour that kernels alone do not give. Snap them in half so they sit under the liquid.
- Milk quantityNone is specified. A cup to a pint suits two quarts of soup; more turns it into a chowder, which is not what is intended here.
- SeasoningSalt and pepper go in at the end, as the original directs; taste after the milk is in, since dairy blunts salt. White pepper keeps the pale soup from looking speckled if that matters to you.
Corn soups thickened with the cob rather than flour are among the most distinctly American entries in nineteenth-century household books, and they run on a seasonal logic that a modern pantry has largely lost: this dish exists only in the few weeks when sweet corn and ripe tomatoes overlap. The Home Cook Book, first published in Chicago in 1874 and compiled from contributions by named local women, is a document of that kind of cooking, each recipe carrying its author's name the way a church supper dish carries a card.