Sweetcorn (original) (raw)

Sweetcorn, also known as sugar corn, is a hybridized variety of maize (Zea mays), specifically bred to increase the sugar content. Sweetcorn is commonly known as simply corn in the United States, Canada, and Australia. The fruit of the sweetcorn plant is the corn kernel, a type of fruit called a grain in which the pericarp of the fruit is fused with the seed coat and a type typical of the grasses. The cob is a collection of grains. It is close to a multiple fruit in structure, except that the individual fruits (the kernels) never actually fuse into a single mass.

Sweetcorn is commonly eaten as a vegetable, rather than a grain. The cobs are picked for relatively rapid distribution (or frozen in this 'soft' state) before the fruits mature into hard grains. The kernels are boiled or steamed and eaten as a side dish, sometimes with butter. Corn on the cob is a sweetcorn cob that has been boiled, steamed, or grilled whole; the kernels are then bitten off the cob with the teeth. Creamed corn is sweetcorn kernels boiled in a cream sauce. Shoepeg corn is a particularly small, white variety of sweetcorn. Kernels that are allowed to mature to hard grains are used as seed corn or ground into corn flour.