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Corn a La Southern
1 pint scalded milk 1 medium-sized green pepper 1 can corn 2 tablespoons melted butter 1 teaspoon salt teaspoon pepper Chop pepper, mix ingredients in order given, pour into buttered pudding dish, and bake slowly till firm. Fresh corn cut from the cob may be used in the same manner.
A plain corn pudding of the type Metropolitan Life handed out to policyholders: five ingredients, no eggs, and an oven left to do the work. A few notes will get it to set properly.
- The missing eggAs written the dish has no binder at all, so it will thicken only from the corn starch and reduced milk and stays quite loose. Two beaten eggs stirred in with the milk turn it into the firm custard the instruction "bake slowly till firm" implies.
- Bake slowly means 300-325FBake slowly means roughly 300-325F -- a "slow oven" in this period is usually given as somewhere in the 275-325F range, and for a milk mixture the upper part of that is right. Much above 350F the milk proteins curdle and weep; a pan of hot water under the dish keeps the edges from setting long before the center does.
- Scalded milkHeat the pint just until small bubbles ring the pan, around 180F. Scalding is usually explained as a way of dealing with raw milk's souring organisms and enzymes; with pasteurized milk it still helps by warming the mixture so it sets in the oven faster and more evenly.
- One can of cornCanned corn of this era commonly came in a No. 2 can, around 20 ounces or a little over two cups. A standard 15-ounce can of whole-kernel corn, drained, is the nearest modern stand-in but gives rather less; cream-style will make a heavier, sweeter pudding.
- Green pepperAn ordinary green bell pepper, seeded and chopped fine. It goes in raw, so chop it small or sweat it in the melted butter first, otherwise it stays crisp against the soft custard.
- The pepper measureThe seasoning line reads simply "teaspoon pepper," which against a teaspoon of salt is almost certainly a quarter or an eighth. Start at a quarter teaspoon of black pepper and adjust.
- Dish and timingA buttered 1 1/2-quart baking dish. Reckon on 45 to 60 minutes at 325F, until a knife slipped into the center comes out clean and the surface no longer ripples. Serves four to six as a side.
The Metropolitan Cook Book was one of the great free cookbooks of the American century: Metropolitan Life Insurance Company printed it in enormous numbers and gave it away to policyholders through its visiting nurses and agents, part of a broad campaign linking sound diet to lower mortality. That explains the character of a recipe like this one, built on a can of corn and a pint of milk, seasoned with nothing costlier than a green pepper. Baked corn puddings themselves are much older, generally traced to the colonial adaptation of English custard puddings to New World maize, and by the time this book appeared "a la Southern" seems to have served less as a geographic claim than as a shorthand for corn, sweet pepper and a slow oven.