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Good Graham Gems
Three cups sour milk, one tea-spoon soda, one of salt, one tablespoon brown sugar, one of melted lard, one beaten egg; to the egg add the milk, then the sugar and salt, then the Graham flour (with the soda mixed in), together with the lard; make a stiff batter, so that it will drop, not pour, from the spoon. Have gem-pans very hot, grease, fill, and bake fifteen minutes in a hot oven.-Mrs. J. H. S.
— Mrs. Buxton'S Graham Gems
Take one egg and beat well, add pinch of salt, one quart buttermilk or sour milk, and Graham flour enough to make a stiff batter; add one heaping tea-spoon soda and stir thoroughly with a spoon ; heat and grease gem-irons, and after dipping the spoon in cold water, drop a spoonful of batter in each pan, repeating until all are filled bake in a quick oven half an hour. This measure will make a dozen.
Two versions of the same thing from two contributors: a quick-bread batter of sour milk, soda and coarse whole-wheat flour, baked in preheated cast-iron pans. Neither gives a flour quantity, so the texture cue is the whole recipe.
- The hinge: pans hot before the batterGem irons must be in the oven until they are genuinely hot, then greased and filled fast. The batter has no fat to speak of and relies on the shock of the hot iron for its crust and lift; a cold pan gives dense, pale, stuck gems.
- Gem pansHeavy cast-iron pans with shallow oval or round cups, the ancestor of the muffin tin. A cast-iron muffin pan or popover pan works; a light aluminium tin will not hold enough heat, so preheat it longer and expect a softer crust.
- Graham flourCoarse-ground whole wheat with the bran and germ left in, named for Sylvester Graham. Modern stone-ground whole-wheat flour is the closest match. It drinks more liquid than white flour and keeps absorbing as it stands, so mix and bake promptly.
- Flour quantity is not givenBoth cooks work to a texture: a stiff batter that drops in a lump from the spoon rather than pouring. With three cups of sour milk expect somewhere around four to five cups of graham flour, but add it gradually and stop at the drop stage.
- Sour milk and sodaNineteenth-century sour milk was raw milk clabbered at room temperature; cultured buttermilk is the correct modern stand-in, as Mrs. Buxton's version already allows. Do not substitute fresh milk, which has no acid to react with the soda. Sift or whisk the soda through the flour so it does not streak.
- Oven temperatureA "hot" or "quick" oven of the period is usually reckoned at somewhere around 400-450F, though the equivalence is only approximate. Bake until the tops are firm and browned and a skewer comes out clean.
- TimingsFifteen minutes suits gem-sized cups at a hot oven temperature. Mrs. Buxton gives half an hour; in a steady modern oven start checking at twenty minutes.
- LardOne tablespoon of melted lard in the first version can be replaced by melted butter or a neutral oil. It is a small amount and mostly there for tenderness, not flavour.
- YieldMrs. Buxton says a dozen from a quart of buttermilk; the first recipe, with three cups, will give nine or ten. Both are best eaten hot, within minutes of leaving the pan.
Graham gems belong to the long American enthusiasm for whole-meal bread that followed Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian preacher and dietary reformer of the 1830s whose name attached itself to unbolted wheat flour and, eventually, to the cracker. By the time The Dixie Cook Book appeared in the 1880s, "gem" simply meant a small quick bread baked in an iron gem pan, and graham gems were the standard virtuous breakfast bread: no yeast, no waiting, no white flour. That two contributors' versions sit side by side here, credited to Mrs. J. H. S. and Mrs. Buxton, is typical of the compiled community cookbooks of the period, which gathered variants rather than settling on one. The reliance on sour milk is a reminder of a kitchen without refrigeration, where milk turning was expected and soda was the tool that turned it to advantage.