ISSUE 84, SOUTHERN LANDRACE & HEIRLOOM CORN, Part 18: Silver Queen Sweet Corn
Silver Queen Sweet Corn
Introduced by the Rogers Brothers of Idaho Falls, Idaho, in 1958, Silver Queen had three great virtues: its sugary taste, its resistance to disease, and its size. Though it was a late season corn, it single-handedly revived the public esteem for white sweet corn. For over two decades it proved the strongest seller at the produce stand, the grocery, and the processors.
Silver Queen presented a beautiful ear in a tightly wrapped husk. Its initial users did not greatly mind that the sweetness of the corn faded with each passing hour. It burnt itself into the imaginations of Vietnam-era Americans and remains lodged today as a resonant name. So resonant that varieties of subsequent corns—the super sweets that hold their sugar up to five days or the easier to grow sugar extender corns or the triple sugary corns—have often been sold under the name Silver Queen, which has become a kind of substitute category name for white sweet corn. Only among growers do the release names of the many varieties count: Supersweets such as “How Sweet it Is” or “Aspen,” Sugary extender such as “Argent” or “Sugar Pearl” have been rebranded at the bin.
In 2024, cultivators do still grow Silver Queen—but nowhere near as many as did in its heyday from the 1960s through the early 1990s. Some of the super sweets have ten times the sugar of Silver Queen, but have exceeded the ‘bliss point’ in terms of sweetness. When H. Moskowitz in the 1970s showed that there is a threshold where the “more sweet is more better” principle fails, not every food processor or plant breeder believed him. Another problem with some of the later sweet corn varieties is the breeding of the skin of the kernel to a tough texture so that it is like biting into a Muscadine. Too much hide to get to the sugar. Older consumers particularly hate getting skin lodged between teeth. So the greatest advantage of the latter day white sweet varieties is their ability to retain sweetness after picking for several days (one variety boasts 10 days). For retailers who dump quantities of corn in the bin, this has become a commercial necessity.
Are there any of the older open-pollinated sweet corns the predated Silver Queen still being grown. Yes—two heirlooms retain a hardy band of devotees. The old southern shoepeg variety Country Gentlemen can still be found. Stowell’s Evergreen, despite its long maturation of 98 days, has a distinctive taste that has won a following, particularly persons who cherish old style corn pudding and creamed corn.
Silver Queen was the last corn whose sweetness quotient was adjusted to all of the classic sweet corn recipes developed in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was the last sweet corn bred before “the sugaring of America.”