Choose young sugar-corn, full grown, but not hard; test with the nail. When the grain is pierced, the milk should escape in a jet, and not be thick. Clean by stripping off the outer leaves, turn back the innermost covering carefully, pick off every thread of silk, and recover the ear with the thin husk that grew nearest it. Tie at the top with a bit of thread, put into boiling water salted, and cook fast from twenty minutes to half an hour, in proportion to size and age. Cut off the stalks close to the cob, and send whole to table wrapped in a napkin.
Or, you can cut from the cob while hot, and season with butter, pepper and salt. Send to table in a vegetable dish.
Corn and Tomatoes.
Take equal quantities of green corn cut from the cob, and tomatoes sliced and peeled. Stew together half an hour; season with pepper, salt, and a very little sugar. Stew fifteen minutes longer, and stir in a great lump of butter. Five minutes later, pour out and serve.
Succotash.
This is made of green corn and Lima beans, although you can substitute for the latter string or butter beans. Have a third more corn than beans, when the former has been cut from the cob and the beans shelled. Put into boiling water enough to cover them—no more—and stew gently together until tender—perhaps half an hour—stirring now and then. Pour off nearly all the water, and add a large cupful of milk. Stew in this, watching to prevent burning, for an hour; then stir in a great lump of butter, a teaspoonful of flour wet with cold milk, pepper and salt to taste. Boil up once, and pour into a deep vegetable-dish. If you use string-beans, string and cut up into half-inch lengths before cooking.
Green Corn Pudding. ✠
- 1 quart milk.
- 5 eggs.
- 2 tablespoonfuls melted butter.
- 1 tablespoonful white sugar.
- 1 dozen ears of corn—large ones.
Grate the corn from the cob; beat the whites and yolks of the eggs separately. Put the corn and yolks together, stir hard, and add the butter; then the milk gradually, beating all the while; next the sugar and a little salt; lastly the whites. Bake slowly at first, covering the dish, for an hour. Remove the cover, and brown finely.
This is a most delicious accompaniment to a meat course, when properly mixed and baked. Warm up what is left from dinner for breakfast, by moistening it with a little warm milk, and stirring in a saucepan until smoking hot. You can make this pudding from canned corn in winter, chopping the corn fine.