Limestone itself is not used in any sort of cooking, but quicklime is, and quicklime is made from superheated limestone. By soaking dry maize kernels in the caustic, alkaline quicklime, the outer shell would dissolve, creating hominy. This process is called nixtamalization. The hominy could then be pounded into flour, making masa, used for tortillas.

Nixtamalization can be accomplished with many alkaline materials. Lye, which is derived from wood ashes, is used to make modern hominy.

Tamales Pisque are from Central America, they are made with corn masa and stuffed with mashed red beans. The name Pisque derives from ashed added to the corn masa to release the vitamin content (nixtamalization).

To make hominy, field corn grain is dried, then soaked and cooked in a dilute solution of lye, slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) or wood ash. This process is called nixtamalization. The soaked corn is then washed, and then ground into masa.

The traditional food preparation method of corn (maize), nixtamalization, by native New World cultivators who had domesticated corn required treatment of the grain with lime, an alkali. The lime treatment makes niacin nutritionally available and reduces the chance of developing pellagra. Pellagra was once endemic in the poorer states of the US South, like Mississippi and Alabama because it was not nixtamalized and the populations who ate corn in such places developed a severe deficiency of niacin.

The Mexican Indians, (at one time the only Native Americans in North America), took a 4 row grass and hybridized it into something that is similar in nature to what we recognize as corn today. Not only that but they developed a process by which the nutrients in the corn could be converted into a form more readily assimilated by the human body. The process is called nixtamalization. Dried corn is processed this way before being ground for tortilla or tamale making or for use in a dish such as pozole.