The Corn Belt

The Corn Belt is the band of glaciated prairie and black soil running across Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and eastward from the Nebraska plains, where maize (Zea mays) was grown long before the arrival of European settlers. The Native nations of the region, the Miami, Illinois, Ho-Chunk, Omaha, Pawnee and others, cultivated corn, beans and squash, and the settlers who followed in the nineteenth century took up the crop and built a farming economy upon it. The cooking of the region, as Time-Life describes it in American Cooking, is the cooking of farm households fed from their own fields.

The land made the table. Deep prairie soil, left by retreating ice, carried corn in quantities that no single household could eat, and the surplus went to animals. Corn fed the hog and the beef steer, and the hog in particular turned a bulky grain into meat that could be salted, smoked and kept. Pork, ham, sausage and lard are therefore the foundation of the region's kitchen, and corn appears in nearly every form the farm could devise: fresh on the cob, cut from the cob and stewed, ground into meal for bread and mush, and baked into puddings. The settlers brought their own habits with them, and the region's cooking records their origins. German, Scandinavian, Czech, Dutch and British households each contributed sausages, dumplings, pastries, preserved vegetables and breads, so that a Midwestern church supper could set side by side dishes that belonged to different countries. Time-Life treats this layering as the character of the region rather than a flaw in it: the food is plain, abundant and generous in portion, and it was cooked to feed those who worked the land. The seasons set the calendar. Sweet corn is eaten in late summer within hours of picking, boiled briefly or roasted in its husk, because its sugar turns to starch as it waits. Autumn brings the slaughter, the curing of hams and the putting up of fruit, and winter is lived on what was stored. Pies of apple, cherry and pumpkin, and the preserves, pickles and relishes of the cellar shelf, belong to this rhythm of harvest and keeping. The technique is domestic and exact in its way. A good fried chicken, a pan of cornbread, a roast of pork with its own juices, or a pot of vegetables cooked down with a piece of cured pork all depend on attention to heat and timing more than on any elaborate method. The region asks a cook to respect the ingredient, to let sweet corn taste of itself, and to season with restraint. The Corn Belt also stands behind much of the rest of the American table. Its grain fed the cattle of the plains and the hogs of the interior, and the products of its fields travelled by river and rail to the cities. A dish eaten far from Iowa or Illinois may owe its meat, its meal or its flour to this ground.

The flavour of the Corn Belt is sweetness and savour in plain balance: the milk-sweet taste of fresh corn against the salt and smoke of cured pork, the richness of butter and lard against the sharpness of pickles and vinegar. Seasoning is moderate, built on salt, pepper, onion and the fat of the animal, and the dishes are meant to be eaten in quantity and in company rather than in small, composed portions.