Corn Pies
A can of best corn, or what is better, the same quantity of fresh green corn cut from the cob, a cup of sweet fresh milk, two eggs well beaten, a tablespoonful of butter, salt and white pepper; mix thoroughly, put in buttered pie plates and bake until a light brown. Serve as a vegetable.
A corn custard baked shallow in pie plates rather than a deep dish, which is the whole point: more surface, faster set, and a browned top over most of the bowl. The original gives no temperature, time, or yield.
- The hinge: shallow and moderateThis is an egg custard held together by two eggs and a cup of milk, so bake it at 350F and no hotter. A hot oven will curdle the milk and weep water out of the corn before the top colors; light brown at the edges and a barely-set center is the finish you want, about 30 to 35 minutes in a buttered 9-inch pie plate.
- Quantity of corn"A can of best corn" in this period would have been something in the pint-to-quart range; figure on about 2 cups of drained kernels, or roughly three or four ears cut fresh. Frozen kernels work; thaw and drain them, since the extra liquid thins the custard.
- Fresh corn wants scraping, not just cuttingCut the kernels off, then run the back of the knife down the cob to press out the milky starch. That starch does real thickening work here, and canned kernels bring little or none of it.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured whole milk, as opposed to the buttermilk or clabber a nineteenth-century kitchen also kept on hand. Whole milk is right; skim gives a thin, watery set.
- White pepperProbably specified for appearance, so that no dark flecks show in a pale dish. Black pepper will do if the look does not bother you, though it is a little sharper.
- ButterMelt the tablespoon and beat it into the milk and eggs rather than dropping it in cold, or it will simply float and pool on top.
- Yield and servingOne batch fills a single 9-inch pie plate or two smaller ones and gives four to six side-dish portions. It is served in wedges or spoonfuls as a vegetable, not as a pastry pie; there is no crust anywhere in the recipe.
- Filed under GameChapter placement -- Where it sits in the book is a shelving decision, not a clue about the ingredients. Treat it as a side dish for roast birds or any other meat.
Corn puddings of this kind belong to a long American line of dishes that treat green corn as a vegetable to be bound with eggs and milk rather than a grain to be ground, and they turn up under names like corn custard, corn oysters, and green corn pudding through the nineteenth century. What dates this particular version is the opening phrase: "a can of best corn, or what is better, the same quantity of fresh green corn." Commercially canned sweet corn was widely available and cheap by the 1890s, and the recipe's own hedge "what is better" puts the fresh ear above the tin while still naming the can first. The instruction to bake in pie plates rather than a deep dish yields a shallow layer that sets through quickly.