Sweet Corn Ripe 329 



you have to go south, at least as far south as Maryland, to find 

 good corn fritters. Southern cooks are unsparing with butter 

 and eggs, something no Yankee cook can ever quite bring 

 herself to be. At Sunday night suppers on the Eastern Shore 

 they serve something called corn oysters. This is how they are 

 made: 



CORN OYSTERS 



Take one dozen ears of sweet corn and cut through the kernels 

 lengthwise with a sharp knife. Then cut the corn from the cobs. 

 To one pint of this corn add one cup of sifted flour, half a cup of 

 butter, three eggs well beaten and two teaspoons of salt and two 

 of black pepper. Drop this batter into very hot deep fat and fry 

 crisp and brown. 



No true American feels that there is anything amiss in 

 eating green corn from the cob. Rather, he feels that there is a 

 fine, democratic principle involved in always eating his sweet 

 corn that way. There's something pretty finicky about the sil- 

 ver corncob holders that sometimes appear among a bride's 

 wedding presents, but not, I fancy, on her table. Any Amer- 

 ican worthy to eat our national vegetable should be strong- 

 handed to the point of being able to hold a hot corncob in his 

 own fingers. Cutting the corn from the cob onto one's plate 

 is a method that belongs to the two childhoods. Anyone who 

 feels that corn on the cob is not a dinner-party dish should 

 serve corn pudding. 



CORN PUDDING 



Score and cut the corn from the cobs as described in the recipe 

 for making corn oysters. To one quart of cut corn add one table- 

 spoon of sugar, one of butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Beat 

 up two eggs with three-quarters of a cup of rich milk and beat this 

 into the corn mixture. Pour into a buttered deep dish and bake 

 fifteen minutes in a hot oven. 



Of course one can use canned corn to make these dishes 

 when fresh corn is out of season. But it is not so good. The 



