MACOMB — On Thursday, the Western Illinois Museum hosted Cynthia Clampitt with the Our Front Porch program "How Corn Changed Itself and then Changed Everything" on YouTube.
Clampitt started her program by asking ‘Why do you we talk about corn?’ She then answered the question herself by saying agriculture has shaped world history, and corn has shaped the history of the Americas.
She said the story of corn started over 10,000 years ago in Oaxaca, Mexico. There, people cultivated a weed called teosintes which had the genetic ability to change itself. By the time European settlers arrived on the eastern coast of the United States, at least 200 different varieties were identifiable.
"They [the settlers] hadn’t gotten very far inland at the point where they are counting tens of thousands today," Clampitt said.
Along with the history of corn, Clampitt also shared the history of the plant’s name. She said that Christopher Columbus used the Taíno word mahiz for the grain, creating the Spanish word "maize" for corn. She said that the early European settlers referred to corn as Indian corn because Native Americans used it as their dominant grain.
"My great grandmother Fannie’s farmer cookbook published in 1886 still refers to cornmeal as Indian meal."
Clampitt said outside of both American and Canadian English, corn was referred to as maize. But she also said people should not be surprised with older books which used the word corn instead of maize. According to British English usage, the word corn described any cereal grain, not a specific cereal grain.
"Corn existed before the New World was discovered, it wasn’t maize," Clampitt said.
Clampitt included some facts about the different corn types during her presentation. She said field corn has multiple purposes, from food for both people and animals to creating ethanol. She also mentioned a popcorn kernel will turn inside out when heated instead of just splitting in half, and that blue corn chips are made with blue corn flour.
Clampitt served as Illinois Rhodes Scholar, author and food historian. She wrote the books "Midwest Maize: How Corn Shaped the U.S. Heartland" and "Pigs, Pork, and Heartland Hogs: From Wild Boar to Baconfest." Clampitt held memberships in the Society of Women Geographers, Culinary Historians of Chicago, the Agricultural History Society, the Association of Food Journalists, the Midwestern History Association, and the history section of the International Association of Culinary Professionals.
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The Link LonkOctober 27, 2020 at 04:37AM
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Clampitt shares virtual presentation on history of corn - McDonough Voice
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