[Sca-cooks] Corn Bread

[Decker, Terry D.]

Maize is first mentioned in European writings as "millet" in the Diary of
Christopher Columbus (1492).  He is believed to have brought the first maize
back to Europe.

It is believed that corn from Spain was traded to the Venetians, who in turn
traded it to the Turks.  The Turks then proceeded to grow the plant and it
was introduced to most of Europe as being from Turkey.  This appears to have
happened rather quickly, for maize appears in Leonhard Fuchs' Primi de
Stirpirum published in Basil in 1545 as Turcicum frumentum or Turckisch
korn.

http://www.med.yale.edu/library/historical/fuchs/476-7.gif

Maize was introduced into Africa by the Portuguese as food for the slave
trade in the mid-16th Century and was introduced into Asia about the same
time as part of the spice trade.

In 1563, Guiseppe Arcimboldo depicted a personification of Summer as having
an ear of maize for an ear.  The painting was done in Milan, which is in the
region of Italy where maize is grown and suggests that maize may have been a
common crop by then.

In 1588, maize appears as a New World foodstuff in Thomas Hariot's A Briefe
& True Report of the New Found Land in Virginia.

Please note that none of this demonstrates that Europeans in Europe actually
ate maize.  In fact, there are contemporary comments that lead one to
believe that the English colonists preferred their wheat to the New World
corn, which would lead one to wonder how the majority of people in the Old
World felt about it.  As with white potatoes, maize may have been relegated
to feeding the poor.

As for cornbread, most modern recipes use baking powder or baking soda,
which do not seem to have been used before the 19th Century.  Polenta,
cooked dry and formed into a loaf, is a more likely bet and is probably the
most common way people eat maize in Europe.  I have a couple of questionable
references that maize's use in polenta was uncommon prior to 1650, but I
have no contemporary references supporting or refuting that view.

Bear