Stefan's Florilegium

maize-msg

maize-msg - 12/1/99

The discovery of maize (Indian corn) in the Americas and its introduction
to Europe.

NOTE: See also the files: polenta-msg, flour-msg, rice-grains-msg, bread-msg,
p-agriculture-msg, puddings-msg, frumenty-msg.

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NOTICE -

This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that
I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some
messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.

This file is part of a collection of files called Stefanıs Florilegium.
These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org

I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with
seperate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes
extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were
removed to save space and remove clutter.

The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I
make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the
individual authors.

Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these
messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this
time. If information is published from these messages, please give
credit to the orignator(s).

Thank you,
Mark S. Harris AKA: Lord Stefan li Rous
RSVE60@email.sps.mot.com stefan@texas.net
************************************************************************

Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: mfy@sli.com (Mike Yoder)
Subject: Re: New World foods in period (Was: Feast Formats)
Organization: Software Leverage, Inc. Arlington, Ma
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1993 23:15:10 GMT

A portrait which food aficionados would find interesting is Arcimboldo's
"Rudolf II as Vertumnus," which is reproduced in _Arcimboldo the Magnificent_.
I do not recall when the painting was done, but Arcimboldo's lifetime fell
entirely within period.

This picture depicts Rudolf as an assembly of vegetables, fruits, etc.; his ear
is unmistakably an ear of maize, which is a striking coincidence. I would like
to know whether 16th C. Italian contained the equivalent of our expression "an
ear of corn."

I am certain this is considerably earlier than the 1597 reference to maize
which David/Cariadoc cited, but it does not indicate more than the bare fact
that maize was considered edible. It might be, for example, that it was used
to make bread rather than being eaten boiled or whatever.

It might be useful to examine the picture closely and enumerate the items found
therein. But I leave this to the cooks among us to decide.

Franz Joder von Joderhuebel (Michael F. Yoder) [mfy@sli.com]
"It looks like gray goop."
"Ah, but it's period gray goop!"
-- ritual exchange over oatmeal between Franz Joder and Thome de Laurent

From: DDF2@cornell.edu (David Friedman)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: New World foods in period (Was: Feast Formats)
Date: 11 Nov 1993 05:30:04 GMT
Organization: Cornell Law School

mfy@sli.com (Mike Yoder) wrote:
> A portrait which food aficionados would find interesting is Arcimboldo's
> "Rudolf II as Vertumnus," ...his ear
> is unmistakably an ear of maize, which is a striking coincidence.

...

> I am certain this is considerably earlier than the 1597 reference to maize
> which David/Cariadoc cited,

> Franz Joder von Joderhuebel (Michael F. Yoder) [mfy@sli.com]

I am sorry if I was unclear. My quote was not intended as evidence on when
Europeans became aware of maize but as evidence of what Europeans, or at
least one prominent writer, thought of the idea of eating it as of the end
of the sixteenth century. There is a reference to growing Maize locally by
a German writer in 1542.

David/Cariadoc
DDF2@Cornell.Edu

From: FSRAD1%ALASKA.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU (The Barbarian Wench)
Date: 1 Sep 94 05:19:49 GMT
Organization: Society for Creative Anachronism

Greetings unto the Rialto,
I find it interesting that with all the mention of corn and potatoes,
no-one has explained the mention of corn during medeival times. There was
indeed "corn" in Europe and the British Isles, but not the corn we think
of today. Corn was the term used for whatever grain was the primary crop
in a given place. Threfore, corn in one area, might be barley, while in
another area it might be wheat. When white settlers came to the Americas,
the primary grain was maize, which they, of course, called corn. Maize
and it's descendant, sweet corn are most certainly not period, unless
someone wants to stretch the point and say that the Norsemen who landed
on North America were aquainted with it and therefore it might have been
brought back to the old world. To the best of my knowledge, this never
happened.

I remain your humble servant,
Amber the Restless

From: jtn@cse.uconn.EDU (J. Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Cooking for 50 at Pennsic (was YKYITSCAW)
Date: 26 Apr 1995 23:47:17 -0400
Organization: The Internet

Ive Annor writes:
> Regarding Maize, it's been said that it is eaten by humans in Europe,
> notably England. I'm not sure this was true before 1600, and I'm
> reasonably sure that it is not true outside of England. The maize grown
> in France, for instance, is excellent fodder, but not palatable for
> humans. And I have yet to see a European recipe of any kind, ancient or
> modern, that utilizes it. This is a pity, as it is one of my favorite
> foods.

That was me, sort of. What I actually said, is that maize was eaten in
Europe in period, and in England in 1960. (BTW, my husband, who has spent
an aggregate, spread out, of about two years in England, some as a teenager,
some as an adult, also ate maize in restaurants there.)

Concerning Europe in period: There is a book by Colette Abegg-Mengold
titled _Die Bezeichnungsgeschichte von Mais, Kartoffel und Ananas im
Italienischen: Probleme der Wortadoption und -adaption_. It's a
philological study of the word "mais"/"maiz"/other spellings in Italian,
and it is a gold mine of early references to the stuff. There are
literally twelve pages of quotes from various Italian sources discussing
maize in period (and of course lots and lots and lots more later).
The following is one of the quotations, taken from _Di Gonzalo Fernando
de Oviedo, la historia generale et naturale delle Indie occidentale..._
(1556) ["`" following a letter indicates an accent over it; "'" is
an apostrophe, not an accent]:

E` il vero, che io ho veduto nel mio paese in Madrid
il _Mahiz_, che e` il pane di questi luoghi, assai
buono: et si pose, et nacque in un podere del Commendatore
Hernando Ramires Galindo, presso a` quel devoto Heremo
di nostro signor di Atoccia. Ma in Andalusia in molte
parti s'e` fatto ancho il _Mahiz_.

My Italian is -- well, I have some Latin, a lot of French, I know how
languages change, and I've got a Latin dictionary and grammar. I daresay
someone else can do a better job of translation than I can, but here's
my best:

It is true that I have seen Maize there in my district in
Madrid, and that the bread of these places is quite good:
and it is found and originates in [i.e. it is grown at] a
farm belonging to Commendatore Hernando Ramires Galindo,
near to that devotee of our lord of Attocia, Heremo. But
in Andalusia in many places Maize is also made [i.e. grown].

So there it is. Bread made from maize (the primary form in which the
letters talking about Indians describe eating it, BTW) was made and
eaten in Madrid and Andalusia by 1556, and at least one author thought
it was great.

Which isn't to say that it was universally admired. Here's another
rather delightful quote, from 1591, _Relatione del reame di Congo
et delle circonvicine contrade. Tratta dalli scritti et rationamenti
di Odoardo Lopez Portoghese per Filippo Pigafetta_.

Vi e` miglio bianco nominato Mazza di Congo, cioe` grano
di Congo, et il _Maiz_, che e` il piu` vile de tutti, che
dessi a` porci, et cosi anco il riso e` in poco prezzo,
et al _Maiz_ dicono _Mazza Manuputo_, cioe` grano di
Portogallo.

In my best English rendition:

There is the white millet called Mazza of Congo, namely
grain of the Congo, and maize, which is the most vile
of all, which is eaten by pigs, and thus is even less
costly than rice, and maize is called Mazza Manputo,
namely grain of Portugal.

(Notice, BTW, the implication that rice is dirt cheap.)

The bottom line is that some people ate corn in Europe in period, and
some do today. Others thought it was only fit to be fed to pigs, and
others today agree.

Beware absolutes.

Concerning modern Europe, let me show you a few recipes. I only own one
European cookbook (a Larousse), and sadly, it is in Blacksburg, and I am
not. But the library at school had two, one French, and one Italian.
Here's what I found in the _The Art of French Cooking. Sumptuous recipes
and menus from the heart of the incomparable French cuisine_, translated
by Joseph Faulkner, p. 497 [":" in the middle of a word represents an
umlaut over the preceding vowel; "'" likewise represents an acute accent]:

Mai:s en E'pis

Corn on the cob is an american import now highly esteemed
in France. Cook some milky ears of corn 20 min. in salted
boiling water. Shuck the leaves from the ears and serve
on a napkin with melted butter. Corn on the cob may also
be grilled.

(They're boiling it before they shuck it! Well, to each his own....)
From _Luigi Carnacina's Great Italian Cooking: La Grande Cucina
Internazionale_, p. 219:

Polenta

Polenta is best cooked in a copper pan. Italian cooks
use a "paiolo," which is a kind of cauldron with a rounded
bottom and, unlike most copper pots, it is not lined with
tin. Polenta meal is usually maize flour (comparable to
the American cornmeal) but it may also be made of chest-
nuts. The following is the traditional Italian method of
preparing polenta:

4 cups polenta
2 1/2 teasponns salt
3 quarts boiling water (or more, as needed)

Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil with the salt in a large
copper pot. Bring another quart of water to a boil in a
saucepan; this will be needed as the cooking proceeds. As
soon as the water boils, add 2 1/2 cups of polenta, stir-
ring constantly with a wooden spoon. Traditionally, the
stirring is clockwise only. Reduce the heat. As the
polenta thickens, add a little more boiling water. After
15 minutes, add the remaining polenta and continue
stirring and cooking, adding boiling water when it becomes
too thick. The polenta should cook for about 1 hour; it
will be more digestible and lose any underlying bitterish
taste if the cooking can be extended that long. However,
it is cooked when it comes easily away from the sides of
the pan. The polenta may then be enjoyed soft and very
hot, accompanied by any one of a number of sauces and
garnishes; or it may be allowed to cool and harden, cut
into various shapes, sprinkled with fresh butter and
grated Parmesan cheese, arranged in layers with various
fillings between, and baked, etc. The sliced, hardened
polenta may be substituted for bread, especially when it
is accompanied by a good graby or a dish of braised meat.

The next two pages give a variety of polentas, all based on corn
meal. There is also a recipe for chicken sauted with corn fritters.

As a matter of fact, maize is very widely eaten in northern Italy (mostly
in the form of polenta), Romania, and throughout Eastern Europe. It is,
in general, far less popular in Western Europe, but it is not unheard of.
My primary point, in the posting to which Ive Annor refers, is that one
should beware of absolutes. I repeat it now. Maize is, generally, unpopular
in much of Europe today; but it is _not_ exclusively used for fodder, in
France or anywhere else, and there are places where it is very popular.
(Indeed, according to Stanley Brandes's article on maize in _Ethnology_,
as of 1992, canned corn kernels sprinled on top of lettuce was all the
rage in restaurants in France, under the name "salade exotique".)

A final note. I wasn't born knowing this stuff. I didn't even know
most of it this morning, although I was familiar with the general outline.
I spent two hours at the library this afternoon, and this is the outcome.
My point, is that we have a choice. We can insist on our opinions, or
we can research them. The advantage of the latter procedure is that even
if your opinion was right to begin with, you will probably enrich your
understanding; and if you are wrong, you will find out, and you will not
insist on promulgating error.

One should be as skeptical, in the end, of one's opinions, as of absolutes.
-- Angharad/Terry

From: rlovisol@candelo.dpie.gov.au (Ruth)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Cooking for 50 at Pennsic (was YKYITSCAW)
Date: 4 May 1995 12:23:04 +1000
Organization: Department of Primary Industry and Energy

derek.broughton@onlinesys.com (DEREK BROUGHTON) writes:
> IVANOR@delphi.com wrote:
>IR>By human beings? It's fodder in Europe to this day. And I believe the
>IR>rules pretty specifically state that we cannot consider New World foods in
>IR>preparing period menus.

>1) Yes, Corn is _mostly_ fodder in Europe today. But if you look at the
>fields around here, that's what it's mostly for too. It is eaten
>occasionally in Europe now, I don't know about in period.

>But what on Earth is this about "the rules". What rules? I certainly have
>never encountered an SCA rule that says we can't use new world foods. And
>if we're talking A&S, the rules are simply that you have to document the use
>in period.

>Too many people creating too many "rules"...

I will agree with that one, too many people. If you are interested, I have a
period herbal which describes corn, and has pictures of corn, and lists all the
uses of corn as an "herbal" cure. It was obviously used for more than just
fodder, and although this reference does say that there were not really many
uses for it, it definitely quashes any ideas that they were not used at all!

Kiriel du Papillon

>Coryn llith Rheged | Canton of Wessex Mere
>mka Derek Broughton | Barony of Ramshaven
>derek.broughton@onlinesys.com | Principality of Ealdormere
> | Middle Kingdom

From: djheydt@uclink.berkeley.edu (Dorothy J Heydt)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Corn (was: SCA and Renn. Faires)
Date: 26 Feb 1996 16:30:21 GMT
Organization: University of California at Berkeley

Tom Gibson <masters@nwlink.com> writes:
>The bible story of Joe & his two brothers who sold him for 30 pieces of
>silver uses the term "corn" for grain, and in egypt that mean wheat.....

OK, some basic historical linguistics here.

The English word "corn" is cognate with Latin "granum" (from
which we get "grain") and with lots of other words in other
Indo-European languages. Maybe I better define a term. "Cognate"
means that corresponding words in different languages can be
shown to be related via a regular system of sound-changes, so
that you can reconstruct a hypothetical earlier form, in a
language that no longer exists, from which they all descended.

Now the kicker about corn/granum/etc. is that it doesn't mean any
particular species of grain. It means whatever grain is most
commonly grown in your area. In England, it means wheat. In
parts of Europe, it means spelt (a grain related to wheat but
noticeably different).

Now, wheat is a fussy grain--it won't grow just anywhere, it
likes certain conditions. When the first English settlers came
to the New World, they discovered that the strains of wheat they
had wouldn't grow, or grew badly, in New England. Rye would
still grow--it's a lot more tolerant of bad conditions--and the
local people provided maize, which had been growing in the
neighborhood for millenia.

The English settlers called the maize "Indian corn," on an old
English-language principle of using "{name of other ethnicity} {noun}"
to mean "not a real {noun}," as "Indian summer," "Indian giver,"
"Dutch courage," "French leave." "Welsh rabbit."

But over a few generations, during which maize was their primary
crop, they followed the old Indo-European pattern and started
calling their primary crop just "corn."

Your Bible translation, probably the King James, was done in England
and used "corn" to mean wheat. They didn't *know* that the
primary grain crop in the Middle East was also wheat--in the
fashion of people everywhere and in every time, they assumed that
things elsewhere were just like what they had at home.

Dorothea of Caer-Myrddin Dorothy J. Heydt
(I was a linguistics major, once upon a time)
Mists/Mists/West UC Berkeley
Argent, a cross forme'e sable djheydt@uclink.berkeley.edu
PRO DEO ET REGE

Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 00:13:48 -0000
From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar@isholf.is>
Subject: Re: SC - Indian Grain-found in the Medici Archives

Ras wrote:
>IMO, yes. Many new world foods were introduced to the rest of Europe through
>Italy including tomatoes, possibly capsicums, and a myriad of 'squash' types.

I was just reading this rather interesting passage in The Oxford Companion
to Food:

"The generally accepted view has been that Columbus discovered maize in the
New World in 1492 and brought it back to Spain, whence it was taken with
great rapidity to other parts of Europe, to Africa, and through the Middle
East and India to China. Proponents of this view acknowledge as a difficulty
that the earliest recorded references to maize in Europe give it names such
as "gran turco", but suggest that this was mere confusion, of the same sort
which resulted in an American bird receiving the name "turkey"."

"An alternative school of thought holds that maize must have arrived in Asia,
Africa and Europe before 1492. The early names which it had in these three
continents are cited as evidence that the plant had a Middle Eastern
(Balkan, Turkish, Arabic) centre of distribution in the Old World, and the
already strong argument from nomenclature is fortified by accounts of early
travellers in Africa and elsewhere (all this being set out, with a multitude
of references, by Jeffreys, 1975) and by pointing to the inherent
improbability that a plant which first reached Spain in 1492 could have been
undir cultivation in the E. Indies in 1496 and in China by 1516. (Also,
there seems to be archaeological evidence of its having reached Papua New
Guinea (via Polynesia) 1,000 years ago. Once there, it could have travelled
westwards through SE Asia and S. Asia, and then have been carried by Arabs
to Africa.)"

"The controversy, for those who admit there is one, is alluring, not least
because acceptance of the second hypothesis would imply that other New World
plants could have reached the Old World in pre-Columbian times."

Jeffreys refers to M. D. W. Jeffreys: "Pre-Columbian Maize in the Old
World", in Margaret L. Arnott (ed.): Gastronomy.

Nanna

Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 22:42:08 -0600
From: david friedman <ddfr@best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Indian Grain-found in the Medici Archives

1. I find the pre-columbian stories on the introduction of New World
foods implausible, because we know that post-columbus they spread
very fast. Maize and potatoes and capsicum peppers were all useful
crops for particular purposes. So you have to explain how they could
sit in Asia or wherever for hundreds of years without spreading to
Europe, and then suddenly spread all over Europe after Columbus.

2. I have seen a different explanation for Indian corn, I think in
Finan, John J., _Maize in the Great Herbals_. Apparently Pliny
describes something he calls Indian corn, presumably because it came
from India. When maize was introduced to Europe, some herbalists,
engaged in the project of matching the plants they new with the
classical descriptions, misidentified it with Indian corn, hence the
name.
David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/

Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 07:50:48 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy@asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Indian Grain-found in the Medici Archives

Nanna Rognvaldardottir wrote:
> I know I was reading a discussion on Pliny´s Indian corn fairly recently, I
> just can´t remember now where it was, or what it was thought to be. Not
> maize, certainly.

Sounds like sorghum to me...

Adamantius

Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 15:02:15 -0600
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD@Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - Indian Grain-found in the Medici Archives

<snip of Guinea Fowl info>

> "An alternative schol of thought holds that maize must have arrived in Asia,
> Africa and Europe before 1492. The early names which it had in these three
> continents are cited as evidence that the plant had a Middle Eastern
> (Balkan, Turkish, Arabic) centre of distribution in the Old World, and the
> already strong argument from nomenclature is fortified by accounts of early
> travellers in Africa and elsewhere (all this being set out, with a multitude
> of references, by Jeffreys, 1975) and by pointing to the inherent
> improbability that a plant which first reached Spain in 1492 could have been
> undir cultivation in the E. Indies in 1496 and in China by 1516. (Also,
> there seems to be archaeological evidence of its having reached Papua New
> Guinea (via Polynesia) 1,000 years ago. Once there, it could have travelled
> westwards through SE Asia and S. Asia, and then have been carried by Arabs
> to Africa.)"
>
> "The controversy, for those who admit there is one, is alluring, not least
> because acceptance of the second hypothesis would imply that other New
> World plants could have reached the Old World in pre-Columbian times."
>
> Jeffreys refers to M. D. W. Jeffreys: "Pre-Columbian Maize in the Old
> World", in Margaret L. Arnott (ed.): Gastronomy.
>
> Nanna

There is a type of maize indigenious to China and probably used as food at
one time. It is distantly related to New World maize. IIRC, the botanist
who described the plant was trying to determine the botanical history of
maize in China and came to the conclusion that there is no botanical
evidence for Pre-Columbian New World maize in China.

While corn could have travelled westward and been brought to Africa by the
Arabs, I have yet to see any documentation similar to that for sugar cane or
bananas.

Bear

<the end>