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🌽 Nixtamalisation: the corn chemistry that built Mesoamerica

Raw maize will not feed a city. Alkali, a night in the pot, and the grain becomes food.

7
lessons
~30 min
to learn
🔬 Science
subject
Adults
level
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What you’ll learn

  1. The kernel that will not feed youSee untreated dried maize as a locked staple: bound niacin, little available tryptophan, three rooms in one seed.Dried maize stores calories and hides its niacin. Teosinte was bred into a cob, not into a complete food. Limewater overnight is what opens the cupboard.
  2. The pot, the lime, the nightName the sequence boil, steep, wash, grind, and tell nixtamal from masa from nejayote.Calcium hydroxide takes the bath above pH 11. An overnight steep, a wash and a grind turn hard grain into nixtamal and then masa. Hominy is the same grain left whole.
  3. The hull lets goConnect pericarp hemicellulose, a strongly alkaline bath, and the nejayote tax to a dough that can hold.Hemicellulose dissolves in strong alkali, so the hull slips. The wash throws away glue, some phenolics and some vitamins on purpose. A plain boil never enters that bargain.
  4. Calcium walks inSeparate the two jobs of lime, the measured calcium rise, complementary beans, and the grind that makes masa.Lime donates calcium as well as hydroxide. Beans supply the amino acids maize lacks. The metate finishes a partial gelatinisation that untreated meal cannot fake.
  5. When maize left without the potFollow pellagra from Casal to Goldberger to Elvehjem, and treat tortillas as the cuisine that already had the control group.Untreated maize as a staple produced pellagra in Europe and the American South. Goldberger proved diet, not a germ. Elvehjem named niacin. Mesoamerica had already opened the lock.
  6. Dough that holds a cityRecognise tortilla, tamal, pozole and atole as different buildings on the same alkali dough or grain.Masa that holds a disc can also steam in a husk, swell whole in pozole, or thin into atole. The comal sets the sheet. The pot from last night is still the technology.
  7. What the mill keptTell fresh masa, nixtamalised masa harina and precooked arepa flour apart, and read a label for calcium hydroxide.A molino grinds wet nixtamal. Masa harina dries that dough. Precooked corn flour often skips the alkali. The honest test is still the ingredient line.

Questions this course answers

Why will a diet of untreated maize, eaten as the staple, fail to keep a body standing?

MedlinePlus states that corn is a poor source of tryptophan and that its niacin is tightly bound. Limewater overnight releases that niacin. The grain is not empty. It is locked.

Put the traditional nixtamal steps in the order that actually frees the hull and makes masa

Reviews of the traditional process describe an alkaline cook, an overnight steep, a wash that removes hull and nejayote, then a grind. The night is part of the reaction.

Match each word to the thing in the pot it actually names

Nixtamal is the grain. Nejayote is the bath you throw away. Masa is the dough. The pericarp is the skin the bath was hired to loosen.

What does the Nahuatl root nextli in nextamalli refer to?

Nextli is ashes. The older alkali in the name is the hearth, not the citrus, and not necessarily the limestone kiln.

About how many pellagra cases did South Carolina report in 1912, the year Morabia cites before Goldberger was hired?

Morabia's review of Goldberger's work states that by 1912 South Carolina alone had reported 30,000 cases, with a case fatality rate of 40 percent.

What made Goldberger doubt that pellagra was a germ?

Goldberger noticed that staff were spared while inmates were not, which is a strange pattern for an infection and a normal pattern for a diet. He then prevented recurrences by improving the plates and leaving the filth alone.

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