Does anyone happen to know why this particular preparation method is referred to as “corning” and not pickling? It is my understanding that brine is used to “corn” the beef. I just don’t understand what corn has to do with any of this?
“Corning,” according to my very old Joy of Cooking book, also means to preserve in salt in grains… and according to Webster, it means to form into grains, granulate, undoubtedly as was done with early grains (which, as we all know from a Cecil column, were universally called ‘corn’.)
So my inference is: the process of preserving in salt was called corning, and when they started preserving in brine, it seemed only natural to extend the definition.
Just a guess, though.
- Rick
Bricker said it:
“Corn” originally meant “grain,” and indeed those two words have common etymological origins IIRC.
Hence, you hear today of “peppercorns,” which mean the granular pepper that you grind down (or not, depending upon your needs).
The “corns” in “corned beef” did refer to salt corns.
(This has been covered somewhere, but what we call “corn” was originally called “Indian corn,” and we eventually dropped the “Indian” part.)
Cecil’s take…
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_102.html
IMHO, the “corning” of the beef doesn’t refer to the treatment of the beef MEAT, but to the feeding of the beef ANIMAL.
Corn fed beef as opposed to pastured beef.
FixedBack
“Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.”~~G.K.Chesterton 1908
I beg your pardon, but in reviewing the dictionary definition of corned, it appears to mean only “preserved with salt or brine” (see Webster’s New World Dictionary, Second College Edition). There is no reference I can finding supporting your “corn-fed” idea.
May I ask on what you based that assertion?
- Rick
Corn fed beef is an entirely different matter not to be confused with corned beef at your corner deli!
I M HO, you’d have to be a Scientologist to dream up such a hilarious theory.
For your elucidation, epicurious.com provides a surprisingly sophisticated entry on corned beef, replete with brief etymology.
Oops, left this out: USDA provides pretty good info for a governmental agency.
There’s also “corning” gunpowder, which is mixing the raw gunpowder with water, drying it into bricks, and then grinding (very carefully) the bricks. (It burns much faster and cleaner that way.)
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
I got it ,Fix, but I am a pretty corney guy myself. Most everyone has learned to take my remarks with a grain of salt.
“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx