Zea mays, one of the most important cereal crops in the world, has another name: corn. This other name is used in N. America to refer to the sweet kinds of maize (sweetcorn) suited to human consumption; and in numerous familiar words and phrases such as popcorn, ‘corn on the cob’, etc.
Like millet and sorghum, maize is a kind of grass, but it is readily distinguished from its relations by the large seed heads (cobs), and by the relatively short time which it takes to mature.
It is generally agreed that maize, although it exists in a bewildering variety of forms, is a single species and that this species originated in C. and S. America, probably as a result of a wild ancestor (which disappeared in prehistoric times) crossing with the related plant teosinte. No present form of maize is capable of self-propagation; and wherever it grows it is grown by man.
The oldest known remains of the wild ancestor of maize are grains of pollen found in an archaeologist's drill core—a way of sampling soil layers—taken in the excavations for the foundations of a new building in Mexico City. These remains are about 70,000 years old, and so date from a time before there were human beings in that region. Another archaeological dig in Tehuacán, Mexico, revealed the very small cobs, about 2 cm (0.75″) long, of a wild maize which, judging from other remains found at the same site, seem to have been sown deliberately, not just gathered from wild plants. The date of this site is reckoned to be about 5500 bc. Bat Cave in New Mexico, inhabited since 4500 bc, has produced similar remains. This primitive maize had about 50 grains and was similar in type to a very small popcorn.
The oldest S. American remains come from Peru and date from about 1000 bc, by which time the whole continent was well inhabited and people were moving from one region to another, so that the development of maize became a matter of human selection and dissemination rather than botanical accident.
Maize plants bear seed heads (‘ears’) which are larger than those of any other kind of grass; modern varieties may have heads which, exceptionally, measure up to 60 cm (24″) long. The grains are set in rows on a solid central ‘cob’. There is always an even number of rows, 8 to 32, and there may be as many as 1,200 grains on a cob. In all modern varieties, the whole ear is covered by a few modified leaves which form the husk, which prevents the grains from falling off when they are ripe. This feature, although convenient for human beings, is what prevents the plant from reproducing itself naturally; if left on the plant, the ears simply rot away.
Another peculiarity of the maize plant is that the stem bears male and female flowers some distance apart from each other. The male flowers form a ‘tassel’ at the top of the tall stem. The female flowers are a considerable distance below them. These have a ‘silk’ or hairy plume at the tip which catches pollen blown off neighbouring male flowers by the wind. One hair extends from each undeveloped grain. Once pollinated, the female flowers become mature ears. Each plant may have one or two ears. The grains may have a hard or relatively soft coat of any of a large range of colours: white, yellow, orange, red, brown, purplish-blue, or nearly black, or with spots or streaks of several colours. Most modern varieties have white or yellow grains.
The greatest single dissemination of maize, transforming it from an American staple into a global one, is discussed in the box.
Whatever the truth may be about global dissemination, it took place after the main types of corn suitable for direct human consumption had been developed. These types (each of which is now represented by numerous varieties and cultivars), are as follows.
As a staple food, maize is less good than wheat or rice in respect of its protein content and the quality of that protein. However, the diet of the ancient American Indians, which in most parts was mainly of maize, beans, and squash with a little animal food as available, was a sound one, since the beans made up the missing factors of the maize. Even now in much of Latin America a similar diet is followed.
Moreover, the adoption by the Aztec and Maya civilizations of the process known as nixtamalization, which is essentially treatment with an alkali, improved the quality of maize protein considerably. Betty Fussell (1992) explains the process and the chemistry by which it affects this improvement; essentially it ‘unlocks’ important amino acids which are present in maize but would not otherwise be ‘available’. N. American Indians for whom maize was and is the staple have continued to use the process; but its importance has never been generally realized in the other continents to which maize travelled.
Besides being food for the stomach, maize has been of considerable importance as food for the imagination and for myths. Betty Fussell has an admirable chapter on myths involving maize. On a smaller scale, Janice B. Longone has produced a booklet prepared to accompany an exhibition on ‘Mother Maize and King Corn: The Persistence of Corn in the American Ethos’ (Ann Arbor, 1986), in which she pulls together such themes and literary references, with lore of all sorts; Aztec material rubs shoulders with a glossary of Narragansett Indian terms involving corn, quotations from the poet Carl Sandburg, a thumbnail history of popcorn, and a complementary section on the liquid corn of Kentucky (‘where the corn is full of kernels and the colonels full of corn’).
Some maize products have their own entries: see cornflour (a fine form of cornmeal), corn syrup, and hominy. The use of maize to produce certain breakfast cereals is another matter. Cuitlacoche (maize smut fungus) is not a maize product but rather a by-product.
Maize is used to produce various sorts of porridge or cornmeal mush.
Baked goods are numerous and varied. Maize is widely used in the production of corn breads. Cornmeal may be used in conjuction with other flours (wheat, rye, etc.) to produce hybrid loaves; see, for example, Boston brown bread under bread varieties. In addition there are kinds of bread which may be made from cornmeal or may be based on another grain; American ashcake (see again bread varieties) is an example. For corn pone, johnny cake, and spoon breads, see corn breads.
Maize has been used as the basis for many sorts of dishes in the continents to which it emigrated from America. One example is Kenkey, a Ghanaian dish of fermented maize balls, steamed in maize husks and served hot with pepper fish. It has also made a reverse migration to the Caribbean where it appears as Kanki, Conkie, or (in Jamaica) ‘Tie-a-leaf’.
For other dishes based on maize, see atole; hush puppy; mamaliga; polenta; succotash; tamales; tortillas. For scrapple, see Pennsylvania Dutch.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
Amann, Peter H. (1990), The Corncribs of Buzet: Modernizing Agriculture in the French Southwest, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Facciola, Stephen (1990, rev edn 1998), Cornucopia: A Source Book of Edible Plants, Vista, Calif.: Kampong.
Fussell, Betty (1992), The Story of Corn, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
McCann, James C. (2005), Maize and Grace: Africa's Encounter with a New World Crop 1500-2000, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP.
Viola, Herman J., and Margolis, Carolyn (1991), Seeds of Change, Washington: Smithsonian Institution.
