At first the laundry business was its biggest customer, but cooks and early food processors soon began adding cornstarch to as many recipes
By 1866, corn refiners had learned how to use acids to break down cornstarch into glucose, and sweeteners quickly became—as they remain today—the industry’s most important product. Corn syrup (which is mostly glucose or dextrose—the terms are interchangeable) became the first cheap domestic substitute for cane sugar.
By the 1970s the process of refining corn into fructose had been perfected, and high-fructose corn syrup—which is a blend of 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose that tastes exactly as sweet as sucrose—came onto the market. Today it is the most valuable food product refined from corn, accounting for 530 million bushels every year. (A bushel of corn yields thirty-three pounds of fructose.)
The starch itself is capable of being modified into spherical, crystalline, or highly branched molecules, each suitable for a different use: adhesives, coatings, sizings, and plastics for industry; stabilizers, thickeners, gels, and “viscosity-control agents” for food.
