I just saw a picture of a hotel menu from 1890. The vegetable choices were mashed potatoes, roast sweet potatoes, boiled potatoes, macaroni in cream, green peas, green corn, and boiled rice.
What is green corn? Judging from the other items on the list, it doesn’t seem like some special way to prepare corn.
I did a google search and got this AI response: Green corn is a term for young corn ears that are picked and eaten while still tender and sweet, or for varieties of corn that are bred to ripen early. Green corn is also known as “corn in the milk stage” because the kernels are milky.
And this: While most corn was allowed to fully mature and dry on the cob, some corn was picked and eaten green in late August or early September. This early ripe corn is called “green corn” or “corn in the milk stage” due to the kernels’ milky juice .
I grew up in farm country. I’ve worked on farms. But as far as I know, what they’re describing is what we just call corn. You could let the corn dry on the stalk until the kernels were hard but that wasn’t what you would do if the corn was intended for human consumption.
But this menu was written back in 1890. Was dried corn considered to be the normal way to eat corn back then? And eating non-dried corn was something special?
Drying corn was to preserve it. I think it was mostly done in the field.
Animal feed.
Dried corn for human consumption would have been ground some way. To make a variety of meals. There’s great debate as to how or how much to grind it.
(Or, if a certain kind of corn, popped)
Green corn is picked before the tassels are dry and brown.
It’s what we call sweet corn, the kind you want for corn on the cob. Or cut off the cob young enough, and you get a great cream corn. No dairy products needed.
We fry it in butter. Maybe a little onion or peppers.
As an aside, you can get a terrific tummy ache if you eat too much new, fresh corn.
I went to a uni surrounded by cornfields, and one of the big late-summer festivities was the town corn boil. As we used the term, it meant field corn–corn raised primarily to feed livestock–that was very young and thus tender and sweet when cooked. “The moon is made of green cheese” is another use of “green” to mean unripened.
If not picked and eaten while “green,” field corn is hard and definitely not sweet.
Looking it up, yes - there’s one commentator suggesting that the American equivalent would be “the wheat is golden.”
(And now I’m having flashbacks to the American production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat where the “corn” was represented as ears of maize.)
