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Amazing Maize

© Audrey Stallsmith

See, in arriere (looking back), the wigwam, the trail, the hunter's hut, the flatboat, the maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village.
Walt Whitman--Leaves of Grass

Since the plant we call "corn" originated here in the Americas, it is just another example of how deprived the European diet was before the discovery of the New World! Although the word "corn" was already part of the international vocabulary, it generally referred to the most popular grain crop in any given country. In England that was wheat, in Scotland and Ireland, oats, and, in the Middle East, it may well have been barley.

When Columbus introduced "Indian corn" into Europe, it caught on fast and eventually became the second most-grown grain in the world. To differentiate it from their own corn, most Europeans still refer to the American type as maize-a word derived from the Arawak Indian "ma-hiz."

Maize originated as a wild grass in Mexico thousands of years ago. It is believed that, at the beginning, each individual kernel was encased in a husk, like wheat or oats. The ears we know today must have resulted from centuries of careful selection.

As we all know, the Pilgrims probably wouldn't have survived their first winters in this country without Squanto's advice on how to grow the New World grain. To Native Americans, corn, squash, and beans were Three Sisters, meant to be planted together. The first member of that trio remains our nation's most-grown agricultural crop today.

Apparently not all of our "corny" American customs caught on in Europe, however. When my German pen pal visited us one summer, she looked acutely surprised when we all started champing sweet corn kernels directly off the cobs. Once she tried this messy form of maize, she loved it too. But she reported afterwards that she could never find corn-on-the-cob in her own country.

Unfortunately, most Americans probably haven't experienced the real thing either. The imposter called "sweet corn" in supermarkets is generally much too mature, not to mention stale, and has lost most of its natural goodness. The cobs should be picked while the kernels are still young and tender, and cooked and served within minutes of that harvesting. When our sweet corn is ready in August, we generally have it for supper every night. It's the only way we can keep up! Of course, by that time, we're usually trying to eat our way through a mountain of tomatoes and other vegetables too.

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