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Tenth Day: Graham
Three cups Graham flour, one of white flour, three of milk, one tablespoonful lard, one well heaped of white sugar, one salt-spoon salt, one teaspoonful soda and two of cream tartar. Mix as for soda buscuit (No. 104). "We might have some Sally Lunns, Mamma," said Amy. "They're good." "Yes, but real Sally Lunns are made with yeast, and the modern imitations are not quite the same thing.
Our 'company tea-cake' (No. 129) is not very different; but I'll give you the recipe," No. 136-SALLY LUNNS.
One scant quart flour, one cup milk, half a cup lard and the same of butter, four eggs, one teaspoonful salt, one of cream tartar and half as much soda. Eggs to be beaten separately; shortening melted; cream tartar sifted into the flour, and soda dissolved in hot water, as usual. No. 137-LAPLANDERS.
One pint Graham flour, one pint warm water, one wellbeaten egg, half a teaspoonful salt. Beat the egg with one or two spoonfuls of the water, add the salt, half the water, and the flour; beat thoroughly, then stir in the rest of the water. Have gem-pans very hot, butter them, and set immediately into the oven. To have these in perfection, the small tins, after being heated and buttered, should be set into a hot dripping-pan on the top of the stove, and the batter poured in from a pitcher, that there may be no possibility of cooling. Made with milk instead of water, these may be called Graham puffs. "Why is it called Graham flour, Aunt Jane?" "Because it was brought into general use in this country by Dr. Graham, who thought fine flour extremely unwholesome for everybody, and would have been glad to abolish it entirely if he could. It is not quite such a favorite now as it was once, but still every one allows that it is more wholesome than fine flour, and it makes a pleasant variety for our table. Brown bread is made with yeast, like white." "Have you decided yet what we shall have for tea, Aunt Jane?" "We'll have huckleberry cake, certainly; and I was going to have tea-cake, but I think some biscuit and waffles will be best. You all want to get through in time to be dressed for tea, so we'll contrive not to have you too late in the kitchen. The biscuits may be put in to bake an hour beforehand, as it will not hurt them to stand half an hour if they are kept in a warm place; and, before you make them, you may mix the batter for the huckleberry cake, all but the soda, which Rhoda will add the last thing, and the same with the waffles, which, of course, she will have to bake. Some time when we have only our own family, I should like to have you learn to finish them entirely." "We have no recipes for waffles, aunty." "You shall have, if you will get out your note-books. I'll give you three from Mrs. Miller's book, all delicious, as I can testify."
Three recipes sit inside this bit of kitchen dialogue: Graham biscuits, a chemically leavened Sally Lunn, and Laplanders (Graham popovers baked in gem pans). All three depend on the same soda-and-cream-of-tartar system, and on getting the pans hot before the batter goes in.
- Graham flourCoarse, unsifted whole wheat flour. Ordinary stone-ground whole wheat is the closest match; supermarket "graham flour" is usually the same thing under an older label.
- Soda and cream of tartarThis is homemade baking powder: two parts cream of tartar to one part soda. It reacts on contact with liquid rather than in the oven, so sift the cream of tartar through the flour, dissolve the soda in a spoonful of hot water at the very last moment, and get the pans into the oven immediately. Aunt Jane's instruction to leave the soda out until Rhoda adds it is the whole point.
- Salt-spoonAbout a quarter teaspoon. The lard is one tablespoonful and the sugar "one well heaped," so treat the sugar as a heaping tablespoon.
- Scant quart of flourIn the Sally Lunn, roughly 3 3/4 cups. Flour was measured by volume and scooped, so it ran heavier than a spooned modern cup; hold back a little liquid if the batter seems slack.
- LardUse lard if you have it, since it gives the tender crumb these are built around. Butter or shortening works; the Sally Lunn already calls for half butter, half lard, and all butter is acceptable there.
- Gem pans and oven heatGem pans are heavy cast-iron muffin or popover tins. The book specifies no oven temperature, only that the tins be "very hot" and set in immediately; in a modern oven Laplanders want real heat, on the order of 450F, with the tins preheated and buttered just before filling, and the trick of resting them in a hot dripping-pan on the stovetop exists solely to keep them from cooling. Do not open the door for the first 15 minutes. Graham biscuits will take a hot oven, around 425F for 12 to 15 minutes; the Sally Lunn something moderate, around 375F for 25 to 30 minutes, in whatever pan you choose.
- Consistency of the Graham biscuitsThree cups of milk to four cups of flour is a very soft dough by modern biscuit standards, closer to a drop batter. Expect to drop them by spoonfuls or to flour the board heavily; the original expects the maker to already know how No. 104 handled.
- YieldThe original gives none. As a rough guide, the Graham mixture makes something like 18 biscuits and the Laplander batter fills about 10 to 12 gem pans; the Sally Lunn is a large mixture and its yield depends on the pan. All three are best eaten hot, though Aunt Jane allows that the biscuits will not suffer from standing half an hour in a warm place.
Six Little Cooks (1877) was written by Elizabeth Stansbury Kirkland and published in Chicago, and it teaches by conversation: Aunt Jane dictates while the children copy recipes into note-books, which is why the numbered recipes arrive mid-sentence. Aunt Jane's explanation of the flour is essentially correct. Sylvester Graham, a Presbyterian minister turned dietary reformer of the 1830s, campaigned against fine bolted white flour and against bakers' bread; his name attached itself to coarse unsifted whole wheat and stayed there, long after his more extreme prescriptions had faded, exactly as she says. Her aside about Sally Lunn is the more interesting one: the true article is a rich yeast bread, generally traced to eighteenth-century Bath, and the recipe she gives instead is one of the soda-and-cream-of-tartar imitations that spread through American cookbooks as chemical leavening became cheap. She hands it over with an audible shrug. Laplanders, meanwhile, belong to the same family as the Graham gems and puffs of the period, a steam-risen batter that needs nothing but a screaming-hot iron pan — the recipe itself notes that with milk instead of water they become Graham puffs.