region, developed many kinds of corn they could grow in accommodation to the length of growing season, altitude, rain and sun, soil type, etc. These included not only the popcorn and sweet corn we know and love today, but also hominy corn (unusually large kernel, usually hard), flint corn (hard), dent corn (soft), and flour corn (soft). There were early ripeners and later ripeners, often grown in a variety of colors and used not only for nutritive purposes but also for ritualistic ones. Corn in its many forms (and beans) was the mainstay of Indian one-dish meals—soups, stews, and dumplings. They were grown in the most sophisticated agricultural system the world has ever seen: planted in hills of mounded soil the corn stalks provided supports for the climbing pole beans, which in turn provided nitrogen for the corn roots (nitrogen-fixing) as large-leafed squash and pumpkins sprawled over the ground where they kept weeds out and moisture in.

  It wasn’t long before seventeenth century settlers learned how to grow and eat it. One of their earliest dishes, samp porridge (adapted from a Native American dish), combined New World hominy corn and beans, but added the root vegetables and preserved meats brought from Europe. By all old accounts and recent recreations, it was delicious and the backbone of daily dining at times when there was little time to cook.

I do believe that if it hadn’t been for corn, Europeans would never have colonized this immense continent. Corn was so easy to grow, needed so little care, stored so well and produced so much per acre (especially compared to wheat) that it allowed frontier

 families enough time to do all the other things they had to do—clearing fields, building structures, fences, roads, planting. Small wonder, then, that one sees the ear of corn on state flags, and celebrated in mid-western grandiose “corn palaces” elaborately decorated entirely in patterns of colored corn.

With corn so abundant, American ingenuity followed the enterprise of earlier Indians and put it to many uses. English colonists called it “Indian,” thus implying the use of corn meal in Indian Pudding, Indian bread (corn breads), Rye’n’Indian Bread. “Corn Oysters” were sweet corn fritters, fried and shaped like the bivalve. Sweet corn dried or parched (roasted) kept the flavor alive for a year of snacking out of hand or in wonderful corn puddings. And in a sense, raising hogs on corn or distilling corn liquor (white lightening) were simply other ways to preserve one’s crop.

  As Americans left their farms and populated the cities, a barrage of new products made their way into new urban homes and lifestyles. By the late 1800s, cornstarch and corn syrups (Karo) were manufactured commercially, packaged under brand names, and sold in local stores to housewives. At the same time, the producers of kitchenwares were turning out cast-iron corn stick pans in a variety of sizes, elaborate stove-top popcorn

 makers (some cranked for more efficient shaking), and corn graters that sliced through the kernels and scraped the pulp into a bowl, all in one motion. Cook book authors were quick to respond to the desires of home canners, and churned out endless variations of chutneys and relishes; indeed one sees the inevitable corn relishes among the corn chowders, salads, stews, soups, fritters and puddings. 

At first only the farmers had known sweet corn at its best—the sooner eaten after picking the sweeter it would be, as corn sugars change to starch quickly. Folk wisdom is the key: “the only way to eat sweet corn is to get a large pot of water boiling on the stove. Go out to the field and pick what you need. Then run back to the house as fast as you can, and if you stumble, go back for fresh.” Recent hybrids hold their sugar longer, and have made it possible for city dwellers to enjoy something closer to the real thing.

  Throughout, sweet corn maintained its own mystiques. Edward S. Wilson’s “Corn on the Cob,” one of the essays in his The Poetry Of Eating (1908), declared, “Eating green corn has a higher mission. It puts one as close to nature as lying in a bed of lilies. One cannot taste the sunshine anywhere, as when he seizes a juicy ear of corn in his eager fists, and goes at it with an open countenance and a happy smile, ripping off the rows of sweetened dews and dawns, till his mouth and soul reek with

delight …The main thing is the recklessness in eating it, the joyous abandon.... Dear reader, join the soul, and eat corn as a sparrow flies to heaven, with a song in your mouth.”

With those glorious thoughts in mind, you may wish to partake of the many dishes of Wilson’s time. The following recipes are only a sampling of some of the many wonderful tastes of summer. [ Top Left Column ]

Alice Ross brings 25 years as a dedicated food professional teacher, writer, researcher and collector to her Hearth Studios, at which she teaches workshops in various aspects of hearth, woodstove and brick oven cookery. She has served as consultant in historical food for such noted museums as Virginia’s Colonial Williamsburg and The Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts. Ross wrote her doctoral dissertation in food history at the State University at Stony Brook. Currently, she is involved in a major kitchen report on Rock Hall Museum, a 1770’s Georgian mansion on Long Island. Dr. Ross’ e-mail address is aross@binome.com. Her web site is www.aliceross.com