Corn: An Essential Colonial Food

Iowa cornfield

Today we’re so used to eating foods made from corn and seeing large fields of corn spreading across the countryside that we take this humble grain for granted. Have you ever wondered how corn ended up becoming such an important crop in today’s economy—not only for food, but also for oil, fuel, and other products? Well, today we’re going to take a look at this very useful staff of life.

When European settlers landed on the shores of North America, they brought with them the grains they were used to eating, including wheat, oats, rye, and spelt. But they quickly began to add a number of unfamiliar foods eaten by the native peoples they encountered. One of the first was Indian corn, or maize. The colonists soon learned from their Indian neighbors how to plant, harvest, and cook this grain. Corn was relatively easy to grow and very productive, and by the 18th century it was the most widely eaten grain in many of the colonies. Not only did people eat the breads, mush, hominy, grits, and porridge they could make from corn, but they also fed the tops and leaves of the plants to their cattle during the winter months. By the last half of the 18th century corn had become a lucrative commodity for export as well.

White dent corn

The most popular variety of corn in the American colonies was called gourdseed. The plant grew 10 to 18 feet tall and produced 2-3 ears per stalk, each from 7 to 8 inches long. The kernels, called “white dent,” or “she-corn,” were white, deep, and broad, with ends that appeared to be dented when they were completely dried. Farmers came to favor this variety because it produced more grain per acre than wheat and could also be stored longer. It was easier to harvest than wheat as well, and a huge advantage was that it didn’t have to be threshed before it could be ground. One farmer could produce 5 to 10 acres of corn working the land with hand tools or 20 acres if he had a horse and plow.

Corn hills

To prepare the soil for planting, after the threat of frost passed and the soil warmed, farmers would plow furrows across their fields at right angles to create a grid pattern. The distance between the intersection of the furrows depended on the variety of corn to be grown and the quality of the soil. For large varieties like gourdseed, they spaced the furrows so they crossed each other from four to eight feet apart, with six feet being the most common. From 3 to 6 kernels were then pushed into the soil 2 or 3 fingers’ breadth deep at each intersection, and after the plants emerged they were thinned to 2 to 4 plants per hill. Some farmers hilled the earth before planting it, while others planted first, and then built up hills around the base of the plants as they grew. Native Americans planted beans and squash in the hills alongside the corn, and some colonists adopted this practice. The cornstalk supported the bean vines, while the beans provided nitrogen for the corn, and the large squash leaves shaded out the weeds.

Corn shocks

Native Americans set aside a section of their cornfields from which they harvested the “green corn” when the kernels reached their full size but before they dried and became hard, just as we eat sweet corn today. They roasted the ears or made green corn soup to eat during their Green Corn festivals. Some colonists may also have eaten some of their corn this way, but they harvested most of their crop later, after the kernels were dry enough to store and to grind into meal. They cut off the tassels and tops of the cornstalks above the highest ear as soon as they began to dry and the plant didn’t need them anymore—this is often done today too. Bundled into shocks, they were cured in the sun for a couple of days before being stored for use as fodder for livestock in the winter. The blades, or leaves of the plant were also pulled from the stalk, cured, and stored for fodder when they dried.

Corncrib

The ears were left on the stripped cornstalk until the ears dried enough to store. One acre yielded about 15 bushels. Of course, with today’s varieties and farming practices, 1 acre produces a great deal more corn, but during the colonial period this was an excellent yield. Once harvested, the ears, often still in the husk, were generally stored in a corncrib made of saplings, slats, or notched logs, with a floor a few feet off the ground to provide plenty of ventilation so the corn wouldn’t get moldy. On some smaller farms corncribs are still used, and I remember the one we had on the farm where I grew up. If kept dry, corn stores well in the husk, but many farmers preferred to remove them for storage.

Corn sheller

Before the corn could be ground, the kernels had to be shelled off the cob either by hand, or with a metal scraper. Shelling corn by hand is a miserable task, let me assure you! I remember shelling popcorn as a teenager with my church youth group, and we ended up with very sore and blistered hands. Scraping the ears wouldn’t be a fun job either, but thankfully ingenious inventors developed hand-cranked corn shellers in the 19th century. Lester E. Denison from Middlesex County, Connecticut, holds the honors for producing the first modern sheller, which he patented on August 12, 1839. It was a freestanding, hand-operated machine that drew the cob through a series of metal-toothed cylinders to strip off the kernels. Kudos to him for coming up with a way to save your hands! No matter which method you use, however, 2 barrels of ears produce about one barrel of shelled corn.

Have you ever husked or shelled corn or seen it done? If so, please share your experience!

~~~

J. M. Hochstetler is the daughter of Mennonite farmers, an author, editor, and publisher, and a lifelong student of history. Her American Patriot Series is the only comprehensive historical fiction series on the American Revolution. Her novel Northkill, Book 1 of the Northkill Amish Series coauthored with bestselling author Bob Hostetler, won ForeWord Magazine’s 2014 INDYFAB Book of the Year Bronze Award for historical fiction. Book 2, The Return, releases in Spring 2017. One Holy Night, a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story, was the Christian Small Publishers 2009 Book of the Year.

The Three Sisters

Our earliest forefathers came to this land knowing nothing about how to survive here and bringing little with them. But they learned. Much of what they learned about food they learned from the natives. There were many new and strange plants here that the natives had been eating and cultivating for generations.

Corn was a staple for many tribes, as were beans and pumpkins. In fact, these three crops were grown together and called "The Three Sisters." They compliment each other on more than just the dinner table. 

Corn is a grass that grows on a sturdy frame and needs plenty of nitrogen to prosper. Beans are a legume, taking nitrogen from the air and depositing it into the soil. But beans need something to support them as they grow. Both corn and beans thrive best when their roots are kept modestly moist and partially shaded. Pumpkins have broad, prickly leaves that provide shade and also help repel certain pests, like raccoons, who do not like to walk over them. 

Learning how to work with nature to provide for their survival is what kept the early settlers alive. But it also change the world. Foods found native here, like The Three Sisters, were carried back across the ocean and cultivated there as well. And while many people think of potatoes belonging to the Irish, in fact, they were taken back to Ireland from our own Colonial shores.

~ Pegg Thomas



PeggThomas.com

Colonial Style Corn Fritters

I love combining my writing research with my love of cooking and good food. My characters need to eat and I want them to enjoy foods that would have been common in their time period. My current WIP (work in progress) is set at the beginning of the 19th century. My characters would have had to grow, gather, or hunt most of what they consumed.

This past week I pulled out a favorite cookbook, History from the Hearth, and made a batch of corn fritters. Yummy? You bet! Our ancestors knew their way around food. And thankfully, some of them recorded their recipes and handed them down through the generations.

Colonial Style Corn Fritters

2 cups cooked corn
2 eggs - separated
1/4 cup cream
1/4 cup flour
1/2 teas salt
1/2 teas pepper
lard for frying

Beat the eggs whites in a small bowl until stiff. In a larger bowl, slightly beat the egg yolks, then stir in the cream, flour, salt, and pepper. Fold in the egg whites. Add the corn last. Heat lard (or oil if you prefer) in a large frying pan. Drop batter by the spoonful into hot fat and fry until golden brown, then flip and cook the other side. Serve hot. 

This recipe is so simple, with ingredients any Colonial good wife would have had on hand. It could have been made over a kitchen hearth or campfire. Full of both protein and carbohydrates, these hearty fritters would have given them the energy to do all the work they needed to accomplish to survive. 

Tweet this: 

Corn fritter #recipe from Colonial American. #Writing research that's tasty too! 

The best part of enjoying a historical recipe like this, is to eat it while enjoying a great Christian historical book. Maybe one day - God willing - it will be mine!

~ Pegg Thomas

Colonial Baking with the 17th Century English Housewife

When the English housewives stepped onto the shore in New England in the early 1600's, they missed their pippins, cream, butter and honey. Most of

all they missed their English wheat. Corn was the native crop, and the Indians generously shared their knowledge of planting, harvesting and preparing the golden kernels.

The immigrants wasted no time to plant their own crops of wheat with the seeds they brought from England, but it did not take well to the colder New England climate and the colonists soon discovered their survival depended on adapting. They could plant more corn per acre, and with less work. 

Grinding the corn into samp, as the Native Americans did, boiling water could be added for a porridge or pudding. 

Still, the colonial cook could not forget the beautiful wheat dough she pounded

and molded into beautiful loaves. Bread made with ground corn was flat, heavy and coarse. And so once again she adapted. She stretched her small stores of wheat and rye flour with the addition of the more abundant corn meal.

The early thirded bread, named for the three grains, was leavened with barm, or ale yeast, and baked in a round loaf. Boston brown bread is a later adaptation, using baking soda to leaven, and steam to cook the round loaf. 

It wasn't long before English cows were imported, and the English housewife could add milk to her samp porridge. So the next time you pour milk over your cornflakes, think of those brave colonial ladies who adjusted to a New World!

Here's a recipe for thirded bread, easy to adapt for today's kitchen!

Colonial Thirded Bread

1 cup wheat flour                1 teaspoonful salt

1 cup rye flour                    3 teaspoonful sugar

1 cup corn meal                  1/2 cup ale yeast 

Scald milk and cool. Mix your flours and meal together, then pour in milk until stiff enough to hold shape. Put the dough in the mounding board and set in a warm place overnight. In the morning, cut a criss-cross in the risen bread to give it one last spring and place in a hot oven.

A colonial oven was usually located outdoors, heated by a fire. After clearing out the hot coals, the dough would be placed directly on the floor of the oven with a shovel-like tool called a peel. The minute the oven door was opened the oven began to cool down, so the bread would need to bake for about 3 or 4 hours.

Rebecca DeMarino's passion of family, history, travel and writing collided when she boarded a plane with her mother and flew to Horton Point, Long Island and discovered her roots. Her debut novel, A PLACE IN HIS HEART, releases from Revell this June, book #1 of The Southold Chronicles. For more information please contact her at www.rebeccademarino.com and www.facebook.com/AuthorRebeccaDeMarino 

A Harvest of Corn

Autumn is my favorite time of year in New England, with its cooler weather, the changing of the leaves and harvest time bringing fresh pumpkins, squash and sweet ears of corn to the local roadside farm stands.

The Indians called it maize and introduced the grain to the first American settlers who were amazed to see them munch on a whole roasted or boiled ear.  The curious Pilgrims sampled this novel delicacy and learned its secrets from their Indian neighbors.  They adopted it as their own and renamed it “corn,” the generic English word for grain.  They learned to make corn meal, corn breads and cakes, corn chowder and puddings of every variety—from hasty pudding to corn custard.  Soon corn became a staple of the Colonial diet and was grown on every early American farm.

At harvest time, the fresh corn stalks brought an opportunity for neighbors to come together for a husking frolic.  The task of husking and shelling, which would prove tedious for a single family to accomplish on their own, was turned into a festive gathering for men, women and children.  Food, drink and dancing often followed and it was a great opportunity for young people of courting age to meet a potential love interest.

Among the many delectable dishes that settlers learned to make with corn, corn custard was considered a Colonial mainstay.  It was known to be a favorite dish of Revolutionary War General Daniel Morgan, and it remains a favorite around holiday time in New England homes today.  Here’s an easy receipt that serves 6.

2 cups corn kernels, fresh or canned (and drained)

1/4 cup flour

1 tsp. sugar

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. pepper

3 eggs, beaten well

2 cups milk

2 Tbsp. butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350º.  Mix the corn and dry ingredients.  Add eggs, milk and butter.  Bake in a buttered casserole dish set in a pan of hot water for 50-60 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

What is your favorite corn dish or way to enjoy corn?

Lisa Norato
www.lisanorato.com
Lisa Norato, Author/Facebook