The spread of maize throughout much of North America was slow because the right mutations had to arise before Native Americans could select for genotypes that were well suited to the local day length, season length, and altitude (Doebley 1990). Maize as a crop goes back to Mesoamerica about 9 thousand years ago, and it had become a substantial part of people’s diets there by about 4500 years ago ( Kennet et al. The soup features corn four ways, and its various ingredients are available to us only because people have been growing corn (more accurately, maize) and creating distinct varieties for a very long time over an unusually wide geographical area. Best birthdays ever.įor this month’s botany lab, I have created a cold summer soup that is as much a celebration of decadent State Fair food as an homage to the millennia of cultivation and adaptation that makes that food possible. Then we gave them a generous coating of salt from oversized aluminum shakers, passed from hand to greasy hand around the trough and down the line to us. As soon as the charred husks were cool enough to peel back into a handle, we sidled up next to our fellow Hoosiers at a trough ( literally a trough) of hot melted butter and plunged the roasted ears into it, right up to the hilt. The fair was littered with vendors serving huge ears of fresh-picked local corn straight from a grate set up over a large open flame. So every year we went to revel in the indulgent atmosphere of the fair alongside thousands of unbridled Hoosiers from all over the state sweating in tank tops and showing off their best pickles.
We felt like the whole world was celebrating with us since the Indiana State Fair really is just a giant party, with rides and games and food and music and anatomically impressive hogs. When I was growing up in Indiana, every few days during corn season we would pick up a dozen ears from my family’s favorite roadside stand, just hours after harvest, and cook them right away, before the kernels could start converting their sugar into starch.Ĭorn season typically peaked the final week of the Indiana State Fair, which always fell between my sister’s birthday and mine.
It’s August, and everyone from the American Midwest knows that late summer means fresh sweet corn, and a lot of it.
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