Corn on the Cob PC?

[crockett]

Eating corn on the cob last night and the thought hit me that I could pack in some unshucked ears and boil them up. Never heard about any frontiersman eating corn on the cob. Seems it would have happened.

 

[Black Hand]

Was "sweet corn" available in the colonies?

It would seem that Flint corn and other "hard" varieties were available and readily turned into cornmeal, parched corn, popcorn, etc..

 

[coloradoclyde]

I don't have a reference but I am going to say yes....
I have eaten a lot of regular field corn as a child...picked fresh at the proper time and eaten immediately it can be difficult to distinguish from sweetcorn. The method of cooking also can impact the sweetness...

 

[50cal.cliff]

A quick funny story. When I was kid one night my Dad says, he would sure like to have some good corn on the cob.

I looked at him and said sweet corn in not in season now!

He goes to the closet and pulled out an old grocery bag, (paper bag back then)!
Walks to the back door and says, I will be back in a minute!

Mind you this after dark but there is a full moon!

In a few minutes he returns with a bag full of corn! He had gone to neighbors corn patch and picked a bag of it!

I looked at him and said, that is field corn not sweet corn. He just laughed and said, just hang on for a minute.

So we shucked it and pulled the hairs and he put a pot of water on the stove and when it came to boil in went the corn and a big heaping of sugar.

He offered me to try some when it was done.

Still very skeptical, I had to try one. With butter and salt and pepper it tasted better than most sweet corn and even had a better texture than most sweet corn. When you took a bite of it you got a mouthful. I eat several ears that night!

The next day I see the neighbor and he laughs and says, I got to start watching my corn patch. I says, oh really like I had no clue what he meant!!

Yep found some coon tracks in the patch where he raided my corn last night. At first I wasn't sure what I was seeing. I finally figured out that coon had put on him some moccasins on but, only on two of his feet.
Got to give that dang coon his dues though, he is talented cause he used them moccasins on his hind feet walking only on his back two legs, must have used the other two paws the whole time he was raiding my corn!

We both laughed, cause he knew I knew what he was talking about, but neither of us where going to say that!

He then goes on to say guess it weren't no big loss though, as near as I can tell he only took what he could eat!!! LOL

 

[George]

When I was a teen, Othar King, the father of one of my hunting buddies, took us on an overnight squirrel hunting adventure. He was a real character, drove an old Model-T Ford truck. I don't think he ever had to buy gas for it, but he carried a 5-gallon can of oil in the back and stopped to add it often. He drove us about 35 miles into the next county late one afternoon, then back into the boondocks, and we slept on the ground, got up early for the hunt. We were parked between the woods we would hunt and a big field of field corn. We had brought along hotdogs to roast, and while we were cooking, Mr. King went to the field and brought back a dozen big ears of the corn, which was just in the milk stage. He told us to just shuck it, stick it on our wiener-roasting sticks and cook it until it was nicely browned. We did, then slathered on butter, salt and pepper, and that was an outstanding ear of corn. It gets waxy and chewy, with the usual taste of boiled corn on the cob but also a strong caramelized taste. Being teenagers, we boys ate it all. A lifelong favorite, and it works just as well with sweet corn if you catch it at the right stage.

I have read of green ears of corn being roasted in the ashes, and I assume that was done in the husk, but never found a description of it. None involving longhunters or frontiersmen, either, but since corn was the standard crop on the frontier, I suspect they used it in many ways.
***********
Travels in the Confederation, 1783-1784", Johann David Schoepf. He was a German mercenary who toured in some eastern states right after AWI.

Maize, however, does not everywhere come to complete maturity, and the people are accustomed to plant only so much of the commonest sort as they count on eating green. When the maize has just formed its ”˜ears’, and the grain is still soft and full of sap, the Americans hold it to be a delicacy; the ears are boiled or baked in the ashes, and eaten with salt and butter, and in the towns is cried for sale as ”˜hot corn’.
******************
The Native Americans did, too.

_Indian Captivity: A true narrative of the capture of Rev. O. M.
Spencer by the Indians, in the neighborhood of Cincinnati_ , in 1792

It being now about noon, the Indians suspended their sports to partake of the plentiful feast provided by Cooh-coo-cheeh, consisting of boiled jerk and fish, stewed squirrel and venison, and green corn boiled, some in the ear, and some cut from the cob and mixed with beans, besides squashes and roasted pumpkins. For bread, besides that prepared in the ordinary way from corn meal, we had some made of the green corn, cut from the cob and pounded in a mortar until it was brought to the consistency of thick cream, then being salted and poured into a sort of mould of an oblong form, more than half the length and twice the thickness of a man’s hand, made of corn leaves, and baked in the ashes, was very palatable.

and”¦

..about the middle of August, when the ears of corn, grown to full size, were yet in that soft milky state in which they were used for roasting”¦.
***************

I've got to try that creamed corn baked in the leaves, this summer for sure.

Spence

 

[Woods Dweller]

Corn on a Cob would have been around. But, most likely would have been; dried or ground. http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq.html#cornbread

Question about other food's & time. http://www.foodtimeline.org/

:thumbsup: I love corn on the cod. but it hates me.

 

[Woods Dweller]

This recipe come from a confederate Civil War cook.

Artificial oysters

1 green ears of corn grated

1 cup flower

1 egg

Mix all together, spoon mixture into fry pan, and fry till gold brown. Serve with butter.

 

[Blizzard of '93]

fritters :thumbsup:

 

[crockett]

Well it is sort of interesting. A lot of the native people had really simple cooking- put trout on a stick, mud over a bird (feathers and all). You would think they would roast ears of corn in their husks over coals but in all my readings I never have seen it mentioned.

 

[satx78247]

It's difficult or impossible to say what "Native people" did/did NOT do, as the various Native cultures were so very different "in the olden days". - Things like how a particular group cooked anything was probably not thought to be worth commenting upon or writing down, unless it seemed "peculiar to the Non-Native observer".

yours, satx

 

[coloradoclyde]

Well it is sort of interesting. A lot of the native people had really simple cooking- put trout on a stick, mud over a bird (feathers and all). You would think they would roast ears of corn in their husks over coals but in all my readings I never have seen it mentioned.

Although native people ate a lot of sweet corn roasted over the coals.....They are not known for writing about it.

 

[George]

Wolf-Chief, Hidatsa, relating experiences while a teenage minding the tribe's horse herd, near the Mandan villages, on the Missouri River, North Dakota, in the 1860s:

"I also parched two of the ears of corn I had brought. I made a little bed of coals, laid the ears of corn upon it, and rolled them about with a stick, until they were parched brown. I liked corn parched in this way."

From reading quite a lot of descriptions about their cooking, I would guess these were roasted without the husks.

Anyone interested in a peek into the lifestyle and cooking habits of at least one tribe would enjoy the scholarly papers of Dr. Gilbert Livingstone Wilson, such as:

Hidatsa Eagle Trapping
The Hidatsa Earthlodge
The Horse and the Dog in Hidatsa Culture
Bufalo Bird Woman's Garden

Spence

 

[Blizzard of '93]

yes, they did roast the ears (roasting ears) of corn in the coals. I have done this - the silk comes off mostly with the hush. I have read of this in journals of frontiersmen that met the Cherokee. the natives in mexico, s. America had popping corn too.

 

[crockett]

When I was a kid I was told that in Massachusetts, at the first Thanksgiving, after the feast the NDNs made some popcorn in a cast iron pot of the pilgrims. The pilgrims were all bent out of shape that the NDNs were going to crack the pot by heating it up with only dried corn in it.
Now that I've read a bit more, I think what was probably prepared was parched corn- not pop corn. IAE there just doesn't seem to be that much on corn on the cob. I agree, the writing would have to come from a European decent pioneer/frontiersman. Mountain men write of going into a Cheyenne camp and having boiled puppy, etc. so food was mentioned but I've never read, "The corn crop had just come in so the NDNs treated us to fresh corn on the cob." You read of plains NDNs trading dried buffalo for melons and pumpkins of the Missouri River people. Strange nothing about corn on the cob. Maybe it was a "Medicine" type thing they had to take the kernels off the cob.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Some people eat sweet corn without cooking it.....not my preference..
But when I was young my mother got me to liking baby ears...at just the right stage you remove the husk and silk...boil and eat cob and all...

Many a summer fishing, camping, or canoeing trips led me past a corn field and a couple ears ended up on the campfire...

 

[Blizzard of '93]

salt was a trade item for the Cherokee here in NC mountains. in SW Virginia is a big salt spring/deposit that supplied salt to ndn tribes for 100s of miles around.
I suppose it was added to stews made with game meat and 'the three sisters'. and other cooking also.

 

[nhmoose]

Back then it was called corn in the milk stage. raw or roasted in the fire.

Best to roast soak in the brook in the husk for a few hours then burry in the coals for a while YUM!

 

[Loyalist Dave]

I went through eight cook books hoping to pull off a "Spence" with some good references as to how they prepared corn other than milling it ....all of the cook books were from 1755 - 1809....NONE mentioned eating corn, and in fact none mentioned using corn in bread. Only one mentioned corn at all and it was for feeding livestock.

I think it was more a situation that the authors thought corn too "common" ...sort of a snobbery situation....

LD

 

[coloradoclyde]

Dave, consider that there are authors today that have written more cookbooks than all the combined cookbooks of that era.....

Also, a cookbook is often more like looking into the mind of the author than it is looking into history...although, they can and do overlap....we must consider the perspective...

 

[George]

You won't find recipes using corn in English cookbooks of the 18th century, they just didn't use it. The first American Cookbook, by Amelia Simmons in 1796, does have recipes using cornmeal for johny cakes and Indian pudding.

_Johny Cake, or Hoe Cake_.

Scald 1 pint of milk and put to 3 pints of Indian meal, and half pintof flower--bake before the fire.

A Nice Indian Pudding_.

No. 1. 3 pints scalded milk, 7 spoons fine Indian meal, stir well
together while hot, let stand till cooled; add 7 eggs, half pound
raisins, 4 ounces butter, spice and sugar, bake one and half hour.

There is a very good video about the use of corn at this link, but not the ears:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVuWJ54CjpE

You are right that the English weren't impressed with corn breads when they first encountered them. The young Englishman Isaac Weld, traveling in America in 1795-7, said:

"Indian corn bread, if well made, is tolerably good, but few people can relish it on the first trial ; it is a coarse, strong kind of bread, which has something of the taste of that made from oats. The best way of preparing it is in cakes ; the large loaves made of it are always like dough in the middle."

Spence