Graham Gems
1 egg 1 cup milk, or part cream; or 2 tablespoons oil, and milk to fill the cup 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 cup sifted bread flour 3/4 cup unsifted Graham flour Beat together the milk, egg, and salt, add the flour, and beat about one minute, till the batter is free from lumps. Pour the batter into a quart measure, and turn it into hot, slightly oiled gem irons, filling them level full. Bake in a hot oven till nicely browned, from 35 to 40 minutes. Whole-wheat gems are made by using whole-wheat flour in this recipe instead of the Graham, or one and three-fourths cups of whole-wheat flour may be used, and no white flour. Rye gems are made by using rye flour or meal instead of the Graham. White gems are made by using one and three-fourths cups of white flour. For currant gems, mix one-fourth cup of washed and dried currants into the batter. For nut gems use one-fourth cup of chopped walnuts. If it is desired to have the gems a little finer grained, the white may be separated from the yolk of the egg, the remaining ingredients beaten together, and the stiffly beaten white folded in last.
These are gems in the older sense: an unleavened steam-risen batter, closer to a popover than to a muffin. Nothing here will lift the batter except water turning to steam in a very hot pan, which dictates almost every step.
- Preheat the pan, not just the ovenThe batter must hit metal that is already hot enough to set the outside instantly, or the gems stay dense and flat. Oil a cast-iron gem pan lightly and leave it in the oven while it heats, then fill the cups working quickly.
- A hot oven means 425-450FA hot oven -- the recipe gives no temperature. In period usage "hot" is generally taken as somewhere around 400-450F. The stated 35 to 40 minutes is the recipe's own guide; go by deep colour and a firm shell rather than the clock.
- Graham flourCoarsely ground whole wheat, milled with the bran and germ left in. Modern stone-ground whole wheat is the nearest thing; the recipe itself offers the substitution. It is called for unsifted, so measure it straight from the bag.
- Gem ironsHeavy cast-iron pans with shallow round or oval cups, made to be preheated. A standard cast-iron muffin pan works; a thin aluminium or nonstick tin does not hold enough heat to do the same job.
- Bread flourStill sold under that name. The higher protein matters here, giving the batter enough structure to hold the steam, so avoid substituting cake or pastry flour in the white portion.
- The quart measureA pitcher-style measuring jug of four cups. Its only purpose is pouring cleanly and fast into hot cups, so any spouted jug will do.
- No leavening is an omission, not an errorThere is no baking powder or soda in the list. Do not add any; the recipe depends on a thin, well-beaten batter and fierce heat, and chemical leavening changes the texture to a plain muffin.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. They are best within minutes of leaving the oven, while the shell is still crisp.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the American dietary and temperance reformer whose 1830s campaign for coarse unsifted wheat bread made whole-grain baking a moral question as much as a dietary one. By the end of the century that argument had been absorbed into the health-reform cookery associated with Battle Creek, and features here -- no chemical leavening, oil offered as an alternative to cream -- are consistent with that tradition, though the recipe cannot be tied to it on the page alone. Cast-iron pans for these batters were sold as gem pans, and the term survived in American cookbooks well into the twentieth century. Note that the rye, whole-wheat, currant and nut versions all hang off the same base batter.