“[A] white slurry [is] poured out onto a stainless steel table and dried to a fine, superwhite powder—cornstarch. Cornstarch comprised wet milling’s sole product when the industry got its start in the 1840s. At first the laundry business was its biggest customer, but cooks and early food processors soon began adding cornstarch to as many recipes as they could: It offered the glamour of modernity, purity, and absolute whiteness.”

—Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 2006.