Shelling Corn 1939
Highlands
Elizabeth Edwards, who operates a business with a strictly mountain flavor, has discovered a delectable use for the lowly corncob. She’s come up with corncob jelly.
“I got the idea from a story I ran across last fall,” Mrs. Edwards explained one day last week. “It was about a man remembering a visit to an old-time country fair. He mentioned that he had tasted corncob jelly. I decided I would give it a try.”
She had to start with only the idea. She didn’t have a recipe. But being a master hand at the art of canning and preserving, she set out to do a bit of experimenting in her kitchen.
“I had my husband get me a bushel of fresh corncobs,” she said. “They were white corncobs. I boiled them, poured off the juice. Then I worked the juice up into a jelly. It was clear, almost pure white, but tasty. I figured it ought to have some color, so next I tried it with red corncobs. They worked out best.”
She tried it on some of her friends without telling them what it was, and they went wild about it.
“It has a taste similar to apple jelly,” Mrs. Edwards explained. “But a little more delicate. Those who tasted it wanted to know what kind of apples I used. When I told them it was made out of corncobs they wouldn’t believe me.”
—Mountain Cooking – Corncob Jelly written by John Parris
I’ve never even tasted corncob jelly. I’ve seen it at few fairs and festivals. A quick google will turn up all kinds of recipes for it.
Mountain people depended on corn for most of their sustenance as did their animals. That meant a surplus of corncobs. I’ve heard folks say they used them in the outhouse, to start fires with, and to throw at each other as an exuberant childhood game.
Here’s an interesting corncob game from Foxfire 6.
Wayne Wall: We used to play this game in the barn, and my father says he played it as a child in Rabun County, also.
One player is chosen as the sheriff, and an area four or five feet square is marked off as his jail. The other players are fugitives. The sheriff throws corncobs at the fugitives, and each one he strikes has to come to jail. While the sheriff is busy trying to “capture” the other players, they try not only to dodge, but also to set the prisoners free. A fugitive can set a prisoner free by slipping past the sheriff and handing the prisoner a corncob, which becomes his ticket to freedom, releasing him to become a fugitive again.
The game ends when the sheriff has all the fugitives captured and in jail.
I wish we had known about corncob jail when I was a girl. All us kids here in the holler would have had a big time playing it.
Drop back by the rest of this week for more games from Foxfire 6.
Last night’s video: We Heard Gunshots || Mowing, Ice Cream, & Pillow Troubles.
Tipper
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