Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Wheat Gems
Wheat Gems
Mrs. W. H. Ovington.
One pint milk, two eggs, flour enough to make a batter not very stiff, two large spoons melted butter, yeast to raise them, a little soda and salt. Bake in gem irons,
A yeast-raised batter bread baked in cast-iron gem pans. The original assumes you know what a gem iron is and how hot to get it, which is where most of the work lies.
- Gem ironsHeavy cast-iron pans with six to twelve rounded or oval cups, the direct ancestor of the muffin tin. They must be greased and preheated in the oven until the fat shimmers before the batter goes in; that initial blast of heat off the hot metal is what gives gems their crisp shell. A standard muffin tin works but gives a softer crust.
- "Two large spoons"Tablespoons; about 1 oz of melted butter for a pint of milk.
- "Yeast to raise them"The book assumes a homemade liquid yeast or a compressed cake. For a pint of milk, roughly one packet (2 1/4 tsp) of instant or active dry yeast works. Homemade liquid yeasts were much weaker than modern dried yeast, so matching an old recipe's volume with dried yeast would give far too much lift.
- Flour enoughA batter "not very stiff" means pourable but thick enough to mound on the spoon — around 3 to 3 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour to the pint of milk. Add it gradually and stop while the batter still drops sluggishly from a ladle.
- Why both yeast and sodaThe soda is not a second leaven so much as an acid corrective. Nineteenth-century yeast batters were often left long enough to sour, and a pinch of soda neutralised that tang while giving a little extra lift. If your batter has risen only an hour or two and tastes sweet, use no more than 1/4 teaspoon or skip it.
- RisingSet the covered batter in a warm place until it is puffed and bubbled through, about an hour to ninety minutes. Stir the soda in with salt at the very end and get the gems into the hot pans without delay.
- OvenThe recipe names no oven. Gems are usually baked hot, around 400-425F, for roughly 15 to 20 minutes, until well browned and hollow-sounding.
- YieldA dozen or so, depending on the size of the cups. Serve them hot from the pan; batter breads of this kind are best eaten fresh.
"Gem" was the standard American name for a small batter bread baked in a heavy iron pan, and the pans themselves — sold as gem irons through the second half of the nineteenth century — were common enough that a cookbook of the period needed no explanation. Gems are usually associated with the health-reform kitchen, where graham and whole-wheat versions were promoted as more wholesome than white bread; specifying wheat gems here distinguishes them from the cornmeal and rye varieties in the same family. What makes this version look old-fashioned is the yeast: gems were on their way to becoming quick breads raised entirely with soda or baking powder, and a recipe that uses both a leavening yeast and "a little soda" sits exactly on that hinge. Like the rest of The Home Cook Book, it carries a contributor's name — Mrs. W. H. Ovington — and the measurements are the shorthand of a practiced cook.