Zea mays.

The variety that changed the taste of America forever. Launched in 1902 by the Burpee company from a private selection of the gardener William Chambers, of Greenfield, Massachusetts, Golden Bantam pulled off an unlikely cultural feat: it shifted an entire civilization from white corn — then the only kind considered acceptable for the human table — to yellow corn, which had until then been dismissed as a grain fit only for pigs. The success was so total that 120 years later, nearly all North American sweet corn is yellow, and Golden Bantam remains one of the very rare open-pollinated varieties still widely grown — a living heritage in the middle of an ocean of modern hybrids.

A compact plant for the era ("bantam" means small, in reference to the bantam chickens), 1.5 to 2 m tall, with 1 or 2 ears per stem. Modest 15-18 cm ears with 8 rows of small golden-yellow kernels, and the classic, powerful flavour of "real corn" from before the supersweet hybrids of the 1980s — less sweet, yes, but more complex, deeper, with that milky, earthy quality that modern varieties have lost along the way. Eat it imperatively very fresh: the special magic of standard sweet corn is that its sugars start converting to starch the moment it's picked, and an ear eaten within the hour bears no relation to one brought home from the grocery 48 hours later. Ideal for the traditional épluchette (Québec corn-shucking party), boiled in a big pot with butter and salt, BBQ-grilled in the husk then drizzled with lime and Mexican cotija cheese, in a creamy chowder, in roasted-ear relish, or in cornbread with the kernels cut from the cob.

Grower's tip: Corn is wind-pollinated, so it must be sown in a square or rectangular block (never in a single long row) — ideally at least 16 plants (4 × 4) so that the pollen, which falls vertically from the male tassels at the top onto the silks of the forming ears, has a chance to pollinate properly. Without complete pollination, the ears come out half-filled with missing kernels. Direct-sow in place once the soil has genuinely warmed (15 °C minimum), in late May in Québec. The plant is very nitrogen-hungry — a generous application of mature compost or well-rotted manure before sowing. Harvest when the silks turn brown and the kernels tested with a fingernail release a milky juice (not clear, not pasty — milky is the sign of perfect maturity).

• Open-pollinated. Wind-pollinated; crosses very readily with other corns (sweet, dent, popcorn) at several hundred metres — isolate very rigorously for seed saving.
• Height: 1.5-2 m.
• Maturity: 75-85 days after sowing.
• Exposure: full sun.
• Very rich, deep, well-drained soil kept cool. Space plants 25-30 cm in the row, 75-90 cm between rows, in a square block of at least 4 × 4.
• Direct-sow late May to early June in Québec, once the soil is at least 15 °C. A second sowing in late June is possible to stretch the harvest from mid-August to mid-September.