Recipe test: Edna Staebler's corn pudding

I just remembered a spare shelf I had high up in the kitchen where I've stashed the cookbooks I use less often. Over the last few nights I've taken a few of them to bed with me and marked some recipes to try. This is why, on Saturday morning, I made a very old-fashioned thing called corn pudding. It came from a cookbook from my Oma's collection: Food that Really Schmecks: Mennonite Country Cooking, written by Edna Staebler, published in 1968. It's my favorite kind of cookbook in that it really is a good read - you learn about Edna and her family and friends. I've read through this book a few times and love her no-nonsense, honest way of writing about community food, which is a collection of her mother's and friends' recipes, namely those from a friend named Bevvy. She writes about the first time she invited prominent people to her cottage home in Waterloo County, Ontario, how she pored over recipes she'd collected, and those from cookbooks in the library, hoping to impress these well-traveled guests. Finally, she realized, a typical North Waterloo County meal would be perfect because you couldn't have it anywhere else: "My dinner would not be elaborate, or exotic, with rare ingredients and mystifying flavours." She treated them to bean salad, smoked pork chops, shoo-fly pie, schmierkase and apple butter with fastnachts. "They ate till they said they would burst," she writes. Her food, and these recipes, are the result of recipe-swapping between Roman Catholics and Lutherans from the same European areas who settled among the Mennonites in North Waterloo, "till a way of cooking developed that is unique and indigenous to this heaven-blessed area that rejoices in its cultivation, preparation and tranquil digestion of irresistibly good-schmecking (tasting) food."

It was nice to learn that Edna lived to 101 years old.

So, corn pudding. This is pudding in the custardy sense, not in the gelatin sense. You just need corn, eggs, butter, milk, sugar, salt and a little bit of corn starch (or flour). Edna says it's great for any meal - alongside a salad at lunch or dinner, or at breakfast, drizzled with some maple syrup. This is ready for the oven in the time it takes to preheat it, so for that, I give it some convenience points.

As for taste, it was pretty corny. I liked the sweet/saltiness of it, and the custard was fairly light. Maple syrup was a nice topping, in the same way honey is a natural pairing with cornbread. I bet you could mix in some cheese instead, before baking, for a more savory pudding.

I think the main head-scratcher was figuring out what to eat with it. We paired it with some nice salty turkey bacon, which was good. Joel (who describes corn pudding as "interesting") thought it might be good on something, like a piece of toast. I agree with him there, especially since it kind of fell apart with a fork. Which gives it a few negative points for texture. 

Schmecks? I'll give it a B+.

Here's the recipe if you'd like to try it for yourself:

Corn Pudding

adapted from Food that Really Schmecks by Edna Staebler

2 c. corn - fresh, frozen (thawed) or canned

1 tsp. salt

2 eggs, beaten

2 T. butter, melted

1 T. sugar

1 T. flour or cornstarch

1 c. milk

pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 350, and grease an 8x8" baking dish. In a bowl, combine corn, salt, pepper butter, sugar, and flour. In a separate bowl, whisk eggs and milk together, then pour into corn mixture and combine. Pour everything into the prepared dish and bake 35-40 minutes, until the sides look puffy and barely brown.