Mais Biancoperla

Veneto's cooking runs on polenta, usually of Marano maize, but until the end of the Second World War a white polenta was common too, and thought better of: yellow maize was hardier and belonged to the foothills, white to the plain. The white was Biancoperla, whose cobs are long and tapered with big, bright, pearl-white kernels. It was at its widest in the second half of the 19th century and still covered over 50,000 hectares in 1950.