Corn Pudding

History

This corn pudding is recipe No. 135 in "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking," the 1881 cookbook Abby Fisher dictated and published in San Francisco. It is a plain baked green-corn pudding, and her directions are brief: "Take one dozen ears of corn and grate from the cob. Beat four eggs light and add a pint of sweet milk and a tablespoonful of butter, salting and peppering to taste. Beat lightly, place in a deep dish and bake in a hot oven." Ten minutes will bake it; she has the cook grease the dish with butter beforehand and send it to table in the dish it is baked in.

Fisher was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in June 1831 to Abbie Clifton. Genealogical research in San Francisco records identifies her father as James J. Andrews, an Orangeburg planter who held some seventy people in slavery, and an 1869 receipt from the Freedman's Savings and Trust in Mobile records her under her mother's name. Before 1865, censuses recorded only an enslaver's name with the age and sex of those he held, so no surviving record names Fisher herself; Karen Hess, who rediscovered her book, noted that absence of documentation. Having had no schooling, she could neither read nor write, and set the book down by dictation — as her own preface explains, "Not being able to read or write myself, and my husband also having been without the advantages of an education — upon whom would devolve the writing of the book at my dictation — caused me to doubt whether I would be able to present a work that would give perfect satisfaction." She offered it as "a book of my knowledge — based on an experience of upwards of thirty-five years." Her cooking had public standing: a diploma at the Sacramento State Fair in 1879 and two medals at the San Francisco Mechanics' Institute Fair in 1880. The book is among the earliest cookbooks by an African American author and the second known cookbook by a Black woman in the United States, after Malinda Russell's "Domestic Cook Book" (1866).

The historical record does not document a specific earlier origin for this particular dish. What it documents is that Abby Fisher set this version down in her own name, as part of the Southern cooking she had mastered over decades.

Ingredients

• 12 ears corn
• 4 eggs
• 1 pint sweet milk
• 1 tablespoonful butter
• salt
• pepper

Instructions

1. Take one dozen ears of corn and grate the kernels from the cob.
2. Beat four eggs until light.
3. Add a pint of sweet milk and a tablespoonful of butter to the beaten eggs.
4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
5. Beat the mixture lightly together.
6. Grease a deep dish with butter.
7. Place the pudding mixture in the greased dish.
8. Bake in a hot oven for ten minutes.
9. Send to table in the same dish it was baked in.