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Combination of Vegetables
Remove the stalks, leaves and silk from three sound ears of green corn, place in a saucepan with a quart of water, a gill of milk and a teaspoon of salt, and boil for twenty-five minutes, then drain; with the back of a knife-blade detach the grains from the cobs, avoiding as much as possible the fibres, and keep them on a plate. Add half pint of cooked green peas to the corn with three Spanish sweet peppers cut in small squares, and place with the rest. Heat an ounce of better in a frying pan, add the three articles; season with half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg, then fry for ten minutes, lightly tossing them once in a while, then add half teaspoon chopped chives. Toss well while heating for two minutes. Dress on a vegetable dish, and serve.
A succotash-style saute of corn, peas and sweet pepper. The one thing to change is the boiling time for the corn.
- Cut the corn boiling shortTwenty-five minutes in water will leave modern sweet corn limp and starchy-tasting; the varieties in circulation now are generally more tender and sweeter than those of the period. Four to six minutes in the salted milk-and-water is enough, and the kernels then get a further twelve minutes in the pan.
- A gillHalf a cup. Added to a quart of water it is a small proportion; milk in the cooking water was commonly held to keep the kernels pale, though the recipe does not say why it is there.
- A saltspoonA quarter teaspoon. So the seasoning here is half a teaspoon salt, half a teaspoon pepper and a quarter teaspoon grated nutmeg. The pepper is assertive for three ears of corn; scale it back if you want the corn to lead.
- An ounce of butterTwo tablespoons. The original's "better" is a typesetting slip for butter.
- Spanish sweet peppersProbably pimientos, of the sort sold now in jars as roasted pimiento peppers. Three of them, diced, gives perhaps a third of a cup; a fresh red bell pepper substitutes acceptably but wants a few minutes' head start in the butter since it is raw and firmer.
- Stripping the cobsThe back of a knife blade scrapes the kernels away while leaving the tough basal fibre attached to the cob, which is why the recipe specifies it rather than a cutting edge. Do it over a bowl and catch the milky liquid that comes with it.
- The fryingTen minutes in a pan is long for already-cooked vegetables. Keep the heat moderate; the recipe asks only for light tossing, so watch that they do not simply stew in the butter.
- YieldThree ears plus a half pint of peas gives about three cups, which serves four as a side dish.
Corn, beans or peas, and a fat cooked together is a long-established pattern in North American vegetable cookery, descending from the Algonquian dish whose name English speakers rendered as succotash. What distinguishes this version is the Spanish sweet pepper and the nutmeg, which place it in the continental hotel kitchens of the period rather than in a farmhouse. The International Cook Book belongs to that professional tradition, in which a plain regional combination could be dressed up with a pepper and a grating of spice. The long boiling time may be a period detail rather than carelessness: green corn before the sweet-corn breeding of the twentieth century was starchier.