6S6 MAIZE 



CHAP. These are but a few of the many hundreds of recipes in 



XIV - use in the United States and other parts of the world, and 

 were selected to illustrate the possibilities of maize as a food, 

 not as a complete or comprehensive list. 



637. Maize Meal, Corn Meal, or Mielie Meal. — The 

 method of treatment practised by aboriginal peoples, both in 

 Africa and America, was to rub the grain into a meal on a 

 hard and slightly hollowed stone, using a smaller, rounded 

 stone with which to do the rubbing (Fig. 231). The product 

 was coarse, consisting of endosperm, hull, and embryo 

 ("germ") more or less mixed with particles of stone. Fre- 

 quent use of this rough meal by white people, in the early 

 days of South African settlement, was said to produce intesti- 

 nal troubles, due partly, perhaps, to the coarseness of the 

 particles and the bits of stone worn off in the process, and 

 partly to the lack of cleanliness in preparation. Maize meal 

 is now ground by machinery, between ridged steel plates or 

 rollers (see chapter XIII.) which produce a meal of much finer 

 quality than that obtained by the older processes. Two classes 

 are produced : (1) whole meal, in which the embryo is ground 

 up with the endosperm ; (2) the new process meal in which 

 the embryo, as well as the hull, are removed by special 

 machinery. 



Owing to the amount of oil it contains, the old-fashioned 

 whole meal does not keep as well in hot weather as the new 

 process maize meal, for the embryo holds 82 per cent of the 

 total oil-content of the grain. But the higher oil content, on 

 the other hand, adds greatly to the food value in cold weather. 



Ordinary maize meal is classified into white and yellow, 

 and graded into coarse, medium, and fine. 



Maize meal is sometimes used as an adulterant of wheaten 

 bread. "Flour so adulterated yields fewer loaves than an 

 equal quantity of pure wheat flour, and the bread produced is 

 more moist than wheat bread, and has a tendency to be 

 sodden. An addition of 10 per cent of maize flour is calcu- 

 lated to mean a reduction of five loaves on the sack " [Bowman 

 and Crossley, 1). Good loaves, though dark in colour, can be 

 made by adding good wheat flour to fine maize flour. 



Maize meal forms an important item of export from the 

 United States, amounting in 1907 to 766,880 barrels, valued 



