A grain crop bred for high-sugar kernels eaten as a vegetable — derived from teosinte over 9,000 years ago in Mexico, now the staple summer barbecue side dish across the Americas.
From teosinte to cob
Modern corn (maize) is the result of one of the most dramatic plant domestications in human history. The wild ancestor, teosinte, was a grass native to Mexico with small grain heads of just 6–10 hard kernels in two rows. Over 9,000 years, indigenous Mexican farmers selectively bred it into modern corn — with 800+ kernels per ear in 12-20 rows of soft, edible grain.
The transformation was so dramatic that early 20th-century botanists doubted teosinte was even related to corn. DNA evidence in the 1990s confirmed it.
Sweet vs. dent vs. flint
Corn comes in several types:
- Sweet corn — high sugar, eaten fresh. The summer cookout corn.
- Dent corn (field corn) — high starch, used for animal feed, ethanol, processed foods.
- Flint corn (Indian corn) — hard kernels, ground into masa, polenta, grits.
- Flour corn — soft starch, ground into corn flour.
- Popcorn — specific kernels with hard hulls and high moisture, popped by steam pressure.
Most corn grown commercially is dent corn for processing; sweet corn is a small fraction of total corn acreage despite being the most familiar form to consumers.
Sugar conversion problem
Corn has the unusual property of converting sugar to starch rapidly after picking — a sweet ear of corn picked Monday morning is noticeably less sweet by Wednesday. This is why fresh-picked corn from a roadside stand is qualitatively different from grocery-store corn (often picked days earlier and shipped).
Modern supersweet (sh2) varieties convert more slowly, which is why grocery sweet corn is sweeter than 50 years ago — but fresh-picked traditional sweet corn (su varieties) still has a flavor depth that supersweet lacks.
Mexican elote
Mexican street corn — elote — is grilled corn-on-the-cob slathered with mayonnaise, sprinkled with cotija cheese, dusted with chili powder, and finished with lime juice. Sold from carts across Mexico and increasingly across the U.S. as a celebrated street food.
The off-cob version (esquites) puts the same toppings on cut corn kernels in a cup.
Find more vegetables by letter
Sweet Corn starts with S and ends with N. Browse other vegetables along the same letter.
Vegetables that contain a letter from "Sweet Corn":