Vegetable Uses of Maize (Corn) in Pre-Columbian America

Received for publication 16 July 1998. Accepted for publication 1 Dec. 1998. Contribution from the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station. Research supported by the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison. The cost of publishing this paper was defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. Under postal regulations, this paper therefore must be hereby marked advertisement solely to indicate this fact. E-mail address: [email protected] Maize (Zea mays L.) was an important vegetable throughout the Americas in pre-Columbian times. It may have been particularly important for people in temperate zones, where the selection of cultivated vegetables was relatively limited. In this review I shall use the term “corn” rather than maize, given that corn is used in the older literature upon which this review is based. My objective in this review is to focus on vegetable uses; however, some grain uses will also be discussed because the distinctions are somewhat arbitrary. Corn, when grown for grain, is one of the most efficient crop plants in terms of calorie production. Because the grain may be stored for long periods, corn was (and is) the primary source of food energy for most of the major civilizations in the Western Hemisphere. In addition to an energy source, corn has been used as a vegetable by all these civilizations. For the purposes of this paper, I define vegetable as any plant part, usually high in moisture when consumed, that usually undergoes minimal processing beyond cooking. In contrast, a grain is a seed or seedlike fruit that is dried to low moisture for storage and usually processed before consumption. Processing of grains frequently results in a product that is unrecognizable as the original plant part.