Rye Cakes
2 cups sweet milk 1 tablespoon sugar When these are all mixed add ½ cup molasses and 4 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder, stir well and fry in hot lard.
Valuable Information The Royal Baking Powder Company have run a series of advertisements that directly or indirectly attack Calumet Baking Powder in numerous ways. These questionable advertisements are accounted for in the following manner: The Calumet Baking Powder Co., is making a house to house canvass in the interest of the consumer to introduce Calumet Baking Powder and give them a baking powder of rare merit at a moderate price, and save them considerable money compared with what they are accustomed to pay, and wherever Calumet Baking Powder is demonstrated in the home, the Royal Baking Powder Co. have attacked Calumet Baking Powder through such questionable advertisements as the following which are headed Every Woman Should Know. The Housekeeper is Right. Worth Careful Thought. Will you read this Twice? She Knows what She Wants. Alum in Bread. Study Food Values.
Watch Out For Alum.
Have you been tricked into using Alum Baking Powder?
What kind do you use.
Housekeepers Must be Watchful. (See Page 17) After explaining these methods and their reason for this questionable way of meeting honest competition we believe that every lady will dispel any idea she had that Calumet was not pure and wholesome and a powder of rare merit. What Your Government Says To set at rest for all time the question of the healthfulness of "Alum in food," the United States Department of Agriculture, through the Referee Board of Consulting Scientific Experts appointed for that purpose, conducted experiments covering a period of more than sixteen months.
This board was composed of the following nationally known scientists: Ira Remsen, President of Johns Hopkins University, Chairman. Russell H. Chittenden, Professor of physiological chemistry in Yale University and director of the Sheffield Scientific School.
John H. Long, Professor of chemistry in the Northwestern University Medical School.
Alonzo E. Taylor, Benjamin Rush-Professor of physiological chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania.
Theobald Smith, Professor of comparative pathology in Harvard University. The questions submitted to the board were as follows: 1. Do Aluminum compounds, when used in foods, affect injuriously the nutritive value of such foods or render them injurious to health? 2. Does a food to which aluminum compounds have been added contain any added poisonous or other added deleterious ingredients which may render the said food injurious to health? (a) In large quantities? (b) In small quantities? 3. If aluminum compounds be mixed or packed with a food, is the quality or strength of said food thereby reduced, lowered, or injuriously affected? (a) In large quantities? (b) In small quantities?
The investigation was made thru physiological tests on several squads of healthy young men and foods baked with "Alum" Baking Powders were used in their diet in greater quantities than would be used in their ordinary daily life. The unanimous report of the Referee Board, signed by all members, was, "In short the board conclude that alum baking powders are no more harmful than other baking powders. * * * ** "Alum, as such, is not present in food when eaten."
Fritters, Doughnuts & Crullers 1 cup flour
This is a griddle-cake batter printed in a baking powder company's promotional cookbook, and the page as set gives only part of the ingredient list — the rye itself is missing. Read the points below before shopping.
- The recipe is incompleteNo quantity of rye flour, wheat flour, egg or salt survives in this printing. Any figure we supplied would be invention; a working proportion has to come from a complete rye-cake recipe elsewhere.
- Sweet milkFresh whole milk, as opposed to the soured or buttermilk that so many older batters call for. The distinction mattered because sour milk needed soda rather than baking powder.
- Calumet baking powderA double-acting powder leavened with sodium aluminum sulfate together with a phosphate; it is still sold under that name and the modern product still contains sodium aluminum sulfate. Any modern double-acting powder substitutes measure for measure.
- Four level teaspoons is a great dealCurrent practice is roughly 1 to 1¼ teaspoons of baking powder per cup of flour. Four level teaspoons points to a batter of three or four cups of meal and flour; with much less than that the cakes may taste soapy or metallic.
- MolassesHalf a cup of unsulphured molasses, not blackstrap, which is markedly more bitter than the table molasses of the period. It will darken the cakes and make them scorch sooner than a plain batter.
- "Fry in hot lard"For rye cakes of this era that generally means a well-greased griddle or a shallow film of fat rather than deep frying. The sugar and molasses brown fast, so the cakes want a moderate griddle and a little more time than a wheat pancake.
- The advertising is not part of the recipeEverything from "Valuable Information" onward is Calumet's rebuttal to a competitor, and the "1 cup flour" at the end belongs to the fritter recipe that follows. Ignore both when cooking.
The long defence appended to this modest griddle-cake batter is the more interesting half of the page. Calumet, a Chicago firm generally traced to the late 1880s, sold an inexpensive baking powder leavened partly with sodium aluminum sulfate, while Royal built its business on cream of tartar and spent years advertising that alum powders were adulterants — the "alum wars" that ran through American grocery advertising in the decades around the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act. The Referee Board of Consulting Scientific Experts named here was a real federal body, chaired by Ira Remsen of Johns Hopkins, appointed to review food-additive questions after disagreements with Harvey Wiley's Bureau of Chemistry; its finding that alum baking powders were no worse than others was quoted by the alum manufacturers for years afterward. The rye cakes themselves are older than any of this: rye was a dependable northern grain in America long before wheat flour was cheap, and molasses-sweetened rye griddle cakes were a familiar breakfast dish in New England.