This is NOT a recipe! I took the History of Food in the Summer of 2024, and one assignment was to trace the history of the ingredients used in a family recipe. Below is my finished paper. For the record, as I mention at the end, companies are not at all transparent about where our food comes from, and I’d love to see that change.
Creamed Corn with Bacon
Although I spent much of my childhood in New Mexico, my parents were both Midwesterners, from the “Corn Belt” states of Iowa and Illinois. Most of my family recipes are meals you might imagine on a farm table. I made my Mom’s creamed corn recipe because corn is part of both Southwest and Midwest history, and for nostalgia’s sake. Creamed corn has itself evolved over time. Native Americans made a type of creamed corn without milk, scraping the cob and simmering the kernels, starch and juices for a creamy effect (Slagle, n.d.). The first U.S. patent for canned creamed corn is from 1949 (Ralph, 1949), and like today, canned creamed corn manufacturers add only cornstarch, sugar and salt (USDA, 1978). Today, many recipes, including ours, use milk or cream for both texture and taste.
This is the creamed corn recipe my family made most often for holidays, and the three main ingredients are corn, cream cheese and bacon. Corn was introduced to Europeans during the Columbian exchange, but already had a long history in North America. Corn was an important part of the Aztec’s diet, and it spread North from Mexico, through the Southwest, East to the Mississippi River and finally North to the area we now call “The Corn Belt” (State Historical Society of Iowa, n.d.). Corn grew well in the Midwest, and was valuable because of its durability and versatility, providing calories not just for people, but for livestock as well (Cronon, 1991). For my recipe, I purchased Great Value Frozen Corn from Walmart. I spoke to a representative at Walmart who, upon tracing the lot number, was only able to narrow the corn’s origin to “a farm in the U.S.” (Landon, 2024). In general though, after corn is harvested, it is taken to a processing plant to be husked and cleaned, and then quickly frozen at ultra-low temperatures to retain flavor. Once packaged, it is shipped by truck to a distribution center (Frozen Corn, n.d.). All of my ingredients were purchased at Walmart, which the Los Lunas Walmart Distribution Center services. Each were transported from their respective manufacturers to Los Lunas, where they were then shipped by refrigerated truck to Las Cruces (Hampton, 2024).
Bacon, a form of cured pork, can be traced back to China in 1500 BC, and the ancient Greeks and Romans cured pork as well (Jakoblich, n.d.). Pigs first came to Mesoamerica as part of the Colombian Exchange. Later, as other Europeans settled the North Atlantic coast, they brought more pigs. Curing bacon was popular in part for taste, but also as a way to preserve meat without refrigeration (Food Safety and Inspection Service, 2013). Modern bacon was developed in Wiltshire, England in the early 1700s (Van Tonder, 2021), and many households kept pigs before production was commercialized. The raising of pigs eventually centered in the Midwest to be close to the farms that produced feed grains (Checkoff, n.d.), and the packing plants and railroads in Chicago (Cronon 1991). The taste and packaging we recognize today was patented by Oscar Mayer in 1924, and bacon has since gone from breakfast food, to trend, to lifestyle choice, especially in recent decades (Hepola 2008).
The hogs used for the Hormel Black Label Bacon that I used are raised in one of “500 independent family farmers across the U.S. Midwest and from a company-owned farm in Colorado” (Hormel Foods Corporation, 2024). The next stop is Rochelle Foods of Rochelle, IL, where employees the rub hides with their “proprietary brine” before processing the meat, and packaging the bacon (Hormel Foods Corporation, 2021). The bacon is cured with salt and sugar, but the customer service agent I spoke to could not find information about where they are sourced. From Rochelle, the package may go to a cold-storage facility, or straight to a distribution center, where the correct temperature must be maintained for safety.
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Cheese has existed for 8000–10000 years, since around the time of the domestication of dairy animals, and by the time of the Roman Empire it was widespread throughout Europe. English Puritans brought cheese making to New England in the 17th century. (National Historic Cheesemaking Center, 2022). The history of modern cream cheese starts in 1880 in upstate New York, but a type of cream cheese was sold in England as early as the 1820s. It was the clever marketing and advertising of “Philadelphia” cream cheese by the entrepreneur Alvah L. Reynolds that commercialized the product into what we know today. Philadelphia Cream Cheese was never made in Philadelphia, but it was marketed there, because Reynolds knew there was a market who would buy the “best quality” dairy product. The brand merged with Kraft Foods in 1928, and became less of a luxury item, and more popular with the general public (Mires, 2018). Today, Philadelphia Cream Cheese is made in factories in upstate New York and Wisconsin, using milk and cream from “the best American dairy farms” (Kraft Heinz 2024). They also use carob bean gum as a stabilizer, which is imported from Spain, Portugal, Morocco or Italy (Food Navigator 2021). As was the case researching the corn, specifics about which farm were inconclusive, but it would have come by way of one of 14 distribution centers in the Midwest or in New York (The Kraft Heinz Company 2024).
My parents were from Cedar Rapids, IA and Chicago, IL. Only 250 miles apart, the towns had a symbiotic relationship as the country was growing: Chicago providing the packing plants for the farmers’ corn-fattened pigs, to the benefit of both areas (Cronon 1991). Taking a longer view, though, my ingredients have histories both 1000s of years longer and 1000s of miles further away. Citizens of the Roman Empire ate salted pork and cheese, and on this side of the globe, indigenous peoples were cultivating corn in North and South America. The processes of producing all the ingredients have also changed over centuries. American settlers followed in the footsteps of indigenous Americans to grow corn, while New York daily farmers learned from English cheese makers. Most of my ingredients came from domestic sources, quite possibly from the Midwest: Iowa is the largest producer of corn in the country, Philadelphia has farms in Wisconsin, and Hormel gets many hogs from the Midwest. The ingredients just as easily have come from abroad, since corn, pork and cheese are all made worldwide. Conversely, I could make my Mom’s “Midwestern” dish with ingredients entirely sourced in New Mexico, since all three are also grown or made in the state. Admittedly, though, I would have an easier time sourcing Midwestern ingredients in New Mexico, than someone in Cedar Rapids might have finding good green chile. So while my recipe could be both local and global, that is not (yet) true of every recipe.
My other takeaway here is simply the overall lack of transparency regarding where our food comes from. Company websites are mazes with very little information, full of broken links and phone numbers that don’t get answered. It’s almost as if companies don’t want us to know where they source our food, or they have something to hide. I often choose local restaurants over national chains because I feel it is good for the local economy. This research has made me think that I may want to start shopping for groceries locally as well, whenever possible.
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References
Checkoff, Pork. n.d. “History of Pork.” Texas Pork Producers Association (blog). Accessed July 19, 2024.
Cronon, William. 1991. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York, N.Y., United States: W.W. Norton and Co.
Food Navigator. 2021. “‘Efforts to Replace It Are in Full Swing Now…’ Locust Bean Gum Prices Hit Record Highs.” Foodnavigator-Usa.Com. June 25, 2021.
Food Safety and Inspection Service. 2013. “Fresh Pork From Farm to Table.” Food Safety and Inspection Service. 2013.
“Frozen Corn.” n.d. Food Service Systems. Accessed July 19, 2024.
Hampton, Rick. Phone interview by Marion Spragg. July 18th, 2024
Hepola, Sarah. 2008. “Bacon Mania | Salon.Com.” 2008.
Hormel Foods Corporation. 2024a. “Hogs.” Hormel Foods. 2024.
———. 2024b. “Rochelle Foods, LLC.” Hormel Foods. 2024. .
Jakoblich, Jon. n.d. “Bacon History – Bacon Scouts.” Bacon Scouts (blog). Accessed July 19, 2024.
Kraft Heinz. 2024. “Philadelphia – Our Story | Kraft Heinz | Kraft Heinz.” 2024.
Landon, George. Phone interview by Marion Spragg. July 18, 2024
Mires, Charlene. 2018. “Philadelphia Cream Cheese.” Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. 2018.
Nation Historic Cheesemaking Center. 2022. “History of Cheese.” National Historic Cheesemaking Center Museum and Green County Welcome Center (blog). 2022.
Ralph, Cover. 1949. Cream style corn. United States US2484376A, filed January 20, 1947, and issued October 11, 1949.
Slagle, Ali. n.d. “Silky Creamed Corn Recipe.” NYT Cooking. Accessed July 19, 2024.
State Historical Society of Iowa. n.d. “Iowa’s Corn and Agriculture Industry” | State Historical Society of Iowa.” Accessed July 20, 2024.
The Kraft Heinz Company. 2024. “Job Search Results Manufacturing.” Kraft Heinz (blog). 2024.
USDA. 1978. “Grading Manual for Canned Cream Style Corn.”
Van Tonder, Eben. 2021. “Wiltshire Cured or Tank Cured Bacon.” Earthworm Express. 2021.