Huitlacoche, Cuitlacoche

Ustilago may dis

Appears in

Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini

By Elizabeth Schneider

Published 2001

About

Also corn smut, corn soot, corn mushroom

Some think that the looks of the curious corn-and-fungus combination pictured should deter culinary aesthetes, but it has numerous devoted fans. You will need to fight your way to the head of the line to taste it—should you have the good luck to locate it at all. Then you may need to overcome an aversion to its names before sampling the luxury that most Americans who know it call corn smut.

The word the Aztecs used to describe it has even less appealing connotations, says Maricel Presilla, an authority on Latin American foods, who consulted her dictionaries of ancient and modern languages: “The Nahuatl word cuitlacochin translates mildly as ‘bad ear of corn,’ but it is based on cuitlatl, which means dirt, tumor, abscess, and excrement. Cochi means to sleep, but the connection is not explicit.”