Cornflour is in the news.

[m0lsx]

I have just spotted a story about a Tarantula first aid kit essential. Cornflour.

Tucked away in the back of almost every larder in the country lies a crucial, often underappreciated ingredient long seen as a staple of traditional British cooking. Used to do everything from thickening Sunday roast gravies to making shortbread biscuits light and crumbly, cornflour was, and is, a necessity for most home cooks. But now there are fears it could disappear from supermarket shelves forever after Tesco announced it was no longer selling the product as a result of “low customer demand”.

Thomas Kingsford, an American baker, first invented “cornstarch” in 1842 when he discovered a way to isolate tissue from corn kernels while working in a wheat starch factory in New Jersey.

However, Kingsford didn't have food in mind—for the first few years of its existence, cornstarch was used to starch laundry.

And then, in Paisley, in 1854, in the lowlands of Scotland, John Polson made a transformative discovery.

His company, which previously manufactured muslin, worked out how to produce pure culinary starch from maize.

Brown & Polson began producing starch and cornflour on a large scale in the 1860s.

They became the largest manufacturer of starch products in Britain and were granted the Royal Warrant.

Outside of the kitchen, cornflour is found in a range of other everyday items such as baby powder, medical gloves, airbags and adhesives.

If Tesco's has dropped cornflour how long will it be before other sources follow & it becomes difficult to obtain?

 

[Enn49]

I saw that and wondered if Maize Meal (Polenta) would do the same job.

 

[Konstantin]

Hi
polenta consistency is usually a coarser and harder particle but plain flour should do the job
Regards Konstantin