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Graham Gems
1 cup Graham flour 1 cup flour 1 teaspoon salt 4 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1 cup milk 1 egg 2 tablespoons molasses or sugar 3 tablespoons shortening Mix together dry ingredients. Add milk, beaten egg, molasses and melted shortening. Bake in greased gem pans in hot oven about 25 minutes.
A plain quick bread from a baking powder company's promotional book, and it works as written with two adjustments: the leavening is heavy by modern measure and the bake time is long for the temperature.
- Graham flourCoarse-ground whole wheat, including the bran and germ. Modern whole wheat flour substitutes directly; stone-ground gives the closer texture.
- Gem pansHeavy cast iron muffin pans, usually with shallow oval or round cups holding about 1/4 cup each. A standard 12-cup muffin tin works; preheat and grease it well, as the original assumes a hot metal pan that sets the crust immediately.
- "Hot oven"Roughly 400 to 450F in modern terms; the book gives no figures. In a wood or coal range this was judged by hand or by a flour-browning test.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons for two cups of flour is roughly double current practice; recipes of this period routinely called for more than we would. 2 to 2 1/2 teaspoons gives a good rise here.
- TimingTwenty-five minutes at 425F will dry small gems out. Check at 15 minutes and expect 15 to 18 for a standard muffin cup; they are done when the tops spring back.
- ShorteningIn period usage this means any solid fat: lard, vegetable shortening, or butter. Melted butter is the best-tasting choice here and pairs with the molasses.
- Molasses or sugarMolasses darkens the crumb and gives a slightly softer, more tender gem. Two tablespoons is barely sweet by modern standards; these are meant to be eaten with butter.
- YieldAbout 12 standard muffins, or 16 to 18 in small gem cups.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian minister and dietary reformer of the 1830s who argued that finely bolted white flour stripped bread of what the body needed. The coarse whole-wheat flour he championed outlived his more austere teachings and became an ordinary pantry item, showing up in gems, muffins and the crackers that still carry his name. "Gem" is often said to refer to the pan rather than the batter, though the direction of the naming is not settled: cast iron gem pans, sold as a commercial item in the later nineteenth century, were preheated so the batter set on contact, which let a cook turn out something bread-like in twenty minutes without yeast. That speed is exactly the argument this book is making. Published by the Royal Baking Powder Company, it appears designed to demonstrate that chemical leavening could replace the long ferment, and a whole-grain gem, respectable and quick, made the case as well as anything.