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CCCCXXXI: MAYZ, OR INDIAN CORN - Benjamin Franklin, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. V Letters and Misc. Writings 1768-1772 [1904]

Edition used:

The Works of Benjamin Franklin, including the Private as well as the Official and Scientific Correspondence, together with the Unmutilated and Correct Version of the Autobiography, compiled and edited by John Bigelow (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904). The Federal Edition in 12 volumes. Vol. V (Letters and Misc. Writings 1768-1772).

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CCCCXXXI

MAYZ, OR INDIAN CORN

It is remarked in North America that the English farmers, when they first arrive there, finding a soil and climate proper for the husbandry they have been accustomed to, and particularly suitable for raising wheat, they despise and neglect the culture of mayz, or Indian corn; but, observing the advantage it affords their neighbours, the older inhabitants, they by degrees get more and more into the practice of raising it; and the face of the country shows, from time to time, that the culture of that grain goes on visibly augmenting.

The inducements are, the many different ways in which it may be prepared, so as to afford a wholesome and pleasing nourishment to men and other animals. 1st. The family can begin to make use of it before the time of full harvest; for the tender green ears, stripped of their leaves, and roasted by a quick fire till the grain is brown, and eaten with a little salt or butter are a delicacy. 2dly. When the grain is ripe and harder, the ears, boiled in their leaves, and eaten with butter, are also good and agreeable food. The tender green grains, dried, may be kept all the year, and, mixed with green haricots,1 also dried, make at any time a pleasing dish, being first soaked some hours in water, and then boiled. When the grain is ripe and hard, there are also several ways of using it. One is, to soak it all night in a lessive or lye, and then pound it in a large wooden mortar with a wooden pestle; the skin of each grain is by that means skinned off, and the farinaceous part left whole, which, being boiled, swells into a white soft pulp, and eaten with milk, or with butter and sugar, is delicious.2 The dry grain is also sometimes ground loosely, so as to be broke into pieces of the size of rice, and being winnowed to separate the bran, it is then boiled and eaten with turkeys or other fowls, as rice. Ground into a finer meal, they make of it, by boiling, a hasty-pudding, or bouilli, to be eaten with milk, or with butter and sugar; this resembles what the Italians call polenta. They make of the same meal, with water and salt, a hasty cake, which, being stuck against a hoe or other flat iron, is placed erect before the fire, and so baked, to be used as bread. Broth is also agreeable thickened with the same meal. They also parch it in this manner. An iron pot is filled with sand, and set on the fire till the sand is very hot. Two or three pounds of the grain are then thrown in, and well mixed with the sand by stirring. Each grain bursts and throws out a white substance of twice its bigness. The sand is separated by a wire sieve, and returned into the pot, to be again heated, and repeat the operation with fresh grain. That which is parched is pounded to a powder in mortars. This being sifted, will keep long for use. An Indian will travel far and subsist long on a small bag of it, taking only six or eight ounces of it per day, mixed with water.

The flour of mayz, mixed with that of wheat, makes excellent bread, sweeter and more agreeable than that of wheat alone. To feed horses, it is good to soak the grain twelve hours; they mash it easier with their teeth, and it yields them more nourishment. The leaves, stripped off the stalks after the grain is ripe, and tied up in bundles when dry, are excellent forage for horses, cows, &c. The stalks, pressed like sugar-cane yield a sweet juice, which, being fermented and distilled, yields an excellent spirit; boiled without fermentation, it affords a pleasant syrup. In Mexico, fields are sown with it thick, that multitudes of small stalks may arise, which, being cut from time to time like asparagus, are served in desserts, and their sweet juice extracted in the mouth by chewing them. The meal wetted is excellent food for young chickens, and the whole grain for grown fowls.1

[1 ]Kidney beans.

[2 ]Called hominy, and much used in the Southern States, but seldom in New England.

[1 ]In a speech made by the late Governor Tilden on his return from a trip to Europe in the summer of 1877, he alluded to this staple in terms which confer an almost prophetic significance upon this brief paper of Franklin:

“I predict a great increase in the consumption of our corn by Great Britain over the sixty million bushels which it reached last year. It is the most natural and spontaneous of our cereal products. Our present crop ought to be 1,500,000,000 bushels, against 300,000,000 bushels of wheat. It is but little inferior to wheat in nutritive power. It costs less than one half on the seaboard, and much less than one half on the farm. It can be cooked, by those who consent to learn how, into many delicious forms of human food. Why should not the British workmen have cheaper food? Why should not our farmers have a great market? Why should not our carriers have the transportation? Let us remember that commercial exchanges must have some element of mutuality. Whoever obstructs the means of payment obstructs also the facilities of sale. We must relax our barbarous revenue system so as not to retard the natural processes of trade. We must no longer legislate against the wants of humanity and the beneficence of God.”