Home › Breakfast and Tea Cakes › Good Graham Gems
Good Graham Gems
Three cups sour milk, one tea-spoon soda, one of salt, one tablespoon brown sugar, one of melted lard, one beaten egg; to the egg add the milk, then the sugar and salt, then the Graham flour (with the soda mixed in), together with the lard; make a stiff batter, so that it will drop, not pour, from the spoon. Have gem-pans very hot, grease, fill, and bake fifteen minutes in a hot oven. -Mrs. J. H. S.
— Mrs. Buxton'S Graham Gems
Take one egg and beat well, add pinch of salt, one quart buttermilk or sour milk, and Graham flour enough to make a stiff batter; add one heaping tea-spoon soda and stir thoroughly with a spoon ; heat and grease gem-irons, and after dipping the spoon in cold water, drop a spoonful of batter in each pan, repeating until all are filled; bake in a quick oven half an hour. This measure will make a dozen.
Two versions of the same thing from two contributors, neither giving a flour quantity — the batter is judged by feel, stiff enough to drop rather than pour from the spoon. The one thing to get right is the pan: gem irons must be searing hot and greased before the batter goes in, or the crust never forms.
- Gem pansCast-iron gem irons, the ancestor of the muffin tin, with shallow oval or round cups. A heavy cast-iron muffin pan is the closest modern equivalent; set it in the oven while it preheats, then grease it and fill it fast.
- Oven heatNeither book term is quantified; "hot" and "quick" both point to a briskly heated oven, in modern terms somewhere around 400-450F. The high heat is what makes gems spring.
- TimingFifteen minutes suits standard muffin cups in a hot oven. Mrs. Buxton's half hour is twice that, for reasons the recipe does not explain; check at 18-20 minutes and pull them when a skewer comes out clean, or they dry out.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour milled with the bran and germ left in, named for Sylvester Graham. Modern stone-ground whole wheat is the nearest thing; ordinary whole-wheat flour works but gives a finer crumb.
- Flour quantityGenuinely unspecified in both versions. For three cups of sour milk expect roughly 3½ to 4½ cups of graham flour, but add it gradually and stop when a spoonful holds its shape.
- Sour milk and sodaSour milk here means naturally clabbered raw milk; buttermilk is the practical substitute and is what the second version calls for. Pasteurised milk soured with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice per cup also works. Mix the soda through the flour, as the first recipe directs, so it does not streak.
- Melted lardOne tablespoon of lard for three cups of milk is a very lean batter. Melted butter, bacon fat or neutral oil all substitute directly; lard gives the most tender result.
- Dipping the spoonThe cold-water dip in the second version keeps the stiff batter from clinging to the spoon. It works, and saves scraping.
- YieldThe second recipe states it makes a dozen, from one quart of milk. The first uses only three cups, so expect somewhat fewer than that.
Graham gems were the plain, virtuous breakfast bread of the late nineteenth-century American household, and their two names tell the story. "Gem" was the trade term for the cast-iron pan itself, and the bread is often said to have taken its name from the vessel, though the direction of the borrowing is unsettled. "Graham" points to Sylvester Graham, the 1830s temperance preacher and dietary reformer who campaigned for unsifted whole-meal flour against the fashionable white bread of the day. By the time Buckeye Cookery appeared in 1877, Graham's crusading edge had worn off and his flour had simply become a pantry staple, cheap and filling and thought wholesome. That two neighbours' versions sit side by side here, each signed and each slightly different, is typical of the book's method: it was compiled from the contributions of Ohio housewives, and the editors printed the variants rather than choosing between them.