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Larkin Roasted Cereal
A Substitute for Coffee Pour one cup of fresh boiling water over one level tablespoon of Larkin Roasted Cereal for each cup wanted. Boil slowly for fifteen minutes and settle with two tablespoons of cold water. Serve with cream or hot milk.
Three-fourths Larkin Roasted Cereal to one-fourth Larkin Coffee may be used when the taste of the Coffee without its full strength is desired. In making, let boil slowly as directed.
This is a product recipe: the Larkin Company sold its own roasted grain beverage, and the directions assume you have the tin. Any modern roasted-grain coffee substitute — barley, rye, chicory and malt blends of the Postum type — behaves the same way and can be brewed by these proportions.
- What the ingredient wasLarkin Roasted Cereal was a ground roasted-grain preparation sold by the Larkin mail-order house; such products were typically based on grains such as barley or wheat, sometimes with malt or molasses, though the exact formula is not given here. Look for a granular roasted-grain "coffee" rather than an instant powder; instants are stirred into hot water and must not be boiled at all.
- ProportionsOne level tablespoon per cup of water, a lighter dose than most modern coffee measures, yielding a thin brew. If it tastes weak to you, a heaped tablespoon will give more body.
- Why fifteen minutesBoiled coffee turns bitter in that time, but roasted grain is far more tolerant of long boiling and needs a long extraction to give up its colour and body. The long slow simmer here is as directed and should not be shortened as if this were coffee.
- Settling with cold waterThe two tablespoons of cold water drop the grounds to the bottom of the pot, a standard trick from the era of boiled coffee in an open pot. Pouring through a fine strainer or a paper filter does the same job more reliably.
- The three-quarters blendThree parts cereal to one part ground coffee; the recipe offers it for those wanting the taste of coffee without its full strength. Note that the blend still gets the full fifteen-minute boil, which will make the coffee portion harsh — brewing the coffee separately and combining in the cup gives a cleaner result.
- CaffeinePlain roasted grain contains none, which was much of the point. The blended version, using a quarter part coffee, will carry correspondingly less caffeine than a full cup, though the long boil makes any exact figure guesswork.
- Yield and servingScales directly: measure water and grain by the cup and tablespoon for as many servings as you want. Cream or hot milk is not optional garnish here — grain brews are thin on their own, and the fat rounds them out.
The Larkin Company of Buffalo, New York, began as a soap manufacturer and grew into one of the great American mail-order houses, selling groceries, furniture and household goods direct to customers who earned premiums with their orders; a cookbook like this one, circulating recipes that call for Larkin products by name, was part of that machinery. Roasted-grain drinks themselves were far older than Larkin — barley, rye and chicory had been browned and brewed as coffee substitutes in Europe and America whenever coffee was scarce or dear — but they boomed commercially around the turn of the twentieth century, when temperance sentiment and a widespread conviction that caffeine damaged the nerves made a "cereal beverage" respectable. Postum, launched in the 1890s, is the survivor of that wave; Larkin's version, sold alongside its own coffee and offered as a partial dilution of it, shows how the two habits coexisted in the same cupboard.