Corn, Beans, Squash: A Holy Trinity

In honor of Colorado’s 150th birthday as a State, I’m delivering a series of three talks at the Denver Botanic Gardens this August on “the history of food in Colorado.” Attendance at the presentations is sold out, so I thought I’d share some of their content with those of you who can't attend. Here, something about the food and cooking of long-ago and modern-day Indigenous peoples of western and southern Colorado and of Mesoamerica at large.

A glance at language, to start: There are no words for “amino acid” in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, which language descended into Mesoamerica, and into Central and South America, from its roots in what is now the American West and Southwest.

So how did the ancient Indigenous peoples of this continent know that jointly eating the plant trio of corn, beans, and squash—a mainstay of their agriculture—provides a symbiosis of amino acids and protein approaching that of animal protein? Add to the mix the ancient seed amaranth, and it does.

Or how did they know that planting beans alongside corn—I mean next to, so that the beanstalk climbed the cornstalk—fixed nitrogen in the soil, increasing the corn’s yield?

They didn’t know that. But they did. Fascinating. Amazing. A grace.  

Look at all the foods these far-flung peoples gave us and, in time, the continents of Europe and Asia: chiles of matchless diversity; the tomato; all the great squashes such as the pumpkin, zucchini, and chayote; the avocado and guava, to name just two fruits; beans of every stripe; the cacao pod and the chocolate made of it; and vanilla, an edible orchid. 

How did they know that those squashes, for example, and their flowers and seeds, once cooked, are more nutritious in amino acids than equivalent measures of either maize, beans, amaranth, or even egg whites?

And before they received citrus from their Spanish conquistadors, did they realize how much both the essential vitamins C and A came by way of these many foods just mentioned? How did they know? They just did. Awing.

Side note: they also gave us the turkey. We forget that because we think Massachusetts did, but, nope, Mesoamerica did.

Corn, beans, squash—called by the Indigenous as the “Sacred Three Sisters”—are the base of this delicious salad named after them. 

More on corn: Layering ground beef, hard-cooked eggs, raisins, and olives under a pillow of corn “polenta” makes for Pastel de Choclo, Chile’s most famous dish. Hereabouts, we are familiar with white hominy corn as it bases Posole. And read about how, after the Spanish brought corn back to the Old World, it spread over the globe to become the world’s third most planted grain.

More on beans: Find out an answer to one of cooking’s perennial questions, whether to pre-soak dried beans or not and, with the answer, another recipe that honors the Sacred Three Sisters, Cassoulet Beans with Summer Squash and Corn. Or, “Can I just use canned beans anyway?”