Title: Baked Green Corn ... Ogon'sa'
Categories: Amerind Vegetable
Yield: 1 Servings

No Ingredients Found

When the milk has set, Tuscarora and sweet corn is scraped from the cob and beaten to a paste in a mortar. This should be done just before the evening meal. After the housework is finished the housewife lines a large kettle with basswood leaves three deep. The corn paste is then dumped in up to two-thirds the depth of the vessel. Cold ashes to a finger's depth are now thrown over the leaves and smoothed down.

A small fire is built under the kettle which hangs suspended from a crane or tripod. Glowing charcoal is placed on the ashes at the top. The small fire is kept brisk and the coals at the top renewed three times. The cook may now retire for the night if her kettle hangs in a shielded place or in a fire pit. In the morning the ashes and top leaves are carefully removed and the baked corn dumped out. The odor of this steaming ogon'sa' is most appetizing and it is eaten greedily with grease or butter. For winter's use the caked mass is sliced and dried in the sun all day, taken in at night to prevent dew from spoiling it and dogs or night prowlers from taking too much of it, and set out again in the morning to allow the sun to complete the drying. The ogon'sa' is then ready to be stored away for the winter. When ready for use the winter's store of ogon'sa' was taken from storage and a sufficient quantity for a meal thrown in cold water and immediately put on the stove. Boiling for a little more than a half hour produces a delicious dish. Ogon'sa' was one of the favorite foods of the Iroquois and remains so to this day. An Onondaga or Seneca can hardly mention the name without showing that it brings memories of the pleasant repasts that it has afforded. In recent years the corn paste is prepared with a potato masher in a chopping bowl, or by running the corn as cut from the cob through a food chopper. Baking is done in shallow dripping pans in the even. The food so prepared, however, lacks a deliciousness that makes the older method still popular. Source: "Iroquois Uses of Maize and Other Food Plants, New York State Museum Bulletin 144," by Arthur C. Parker, p. 67, November 1, 1910 Shared by: Norman R. Brown 2/93

Submitted By BILL CHRISTMAS

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