Graham cracker

 ( American Inventions ) 

A graham cracker (pronounced or in America) is a sweet flavored cracker made with graham flour that originated in the United States in the mid-19th century, with commercial development from about 1880. It is eaten as a snack food, usually honey- or cinnamon-flavored, and is used as an ingredient in some foods, e.g., in the graham cracker crust for Cheesecake and Pie.

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History The graham cracker was inspired by the preaching of Sylvester Graham, who was part of the 19th-century temperance movement. He believed that a vegetarian diet anchored by bread made from wheat coarsely ground at home, was how God intended people to live, and that following this natural law would keep people healthy. Towards that end, Graham introduced the world's first graham wafer product. It was a dull, unsifted flour biscuit baked by Graham himself.

The sugarless wafers were a key component of the eponymous diet. His preaching was taken up widely in the midst of the 1826–1837 cholera pandemic.

(2025). 9780231140928, Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231140928

His followers were called Grahamites and formed one of the first vegetarian movements in America; graham flour, graham crackers, and graham bread were created for them. Graham neither invented nor profited from these products.. Herman Melville has an early reference to the crackers in Book XXII, Chapter I, of his 1852 novel Pierre; or The Ambiguities:

For all the long wards, corridors, and multitudinous chambers of the Apostles' were scattered with the stems of apples, the stones of prunes, and the shells of peanuts. They went about huskily muttering the Kantian Categories through teeth and lips dry and dusty as any miller's, with crumbs of Graham crackers.

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Production

The main ingredients in its earlier preparations were graham flour, oil, shortening or lard, molasses and salt. Graham crackers have been a Mass production food product in the United States since 1898, with the Nabisco being the first to mass-produce it at that time.

A.F. Smith (2025). 9781610692335, ABC-CLIO. . ISBN 9781610692335

The Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company also began mass-producing the product beginning sometime in the early 1910s.

(1991). 9780133640274, Prentice Hall. . ISBN 9780133640274

The product continues to be mass-produced in the U.S. and Canada today.

Kristine Krapp (1997). 9780787615475, Gale. . ISBN 9780787615475

In earlier times, mass-produced graham crackers were typically prepared using yeast-leavened dough, which added flavor to the food via the process of fermentation, whereas contemporary mass-production of the product typically omits this process.

S.A. Matz (1992). 9780442308926, Van Nostrand Reinhold. . ISBN 9780442308926

The dough is sometimes chilled before being rolled out, which prevents blistering and breakage from occurring when the product is baked.

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Uses

Graham cracker crumbs are used to create graham cracker crusts for fruit pies and , and as a base, layer or topping for cheesecake. Graham cracker pie crusts are mass-produced in the United States, and consumer versions of the product typically consist of a graham cracker crumb mixture pressed into an aluminum pie pan. The graham cracker is a main ingredient in the preparation of the s'more. Graham crackers are commonly used in place of broas in the traditional Filipino cuisine icebox cake mango float.

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Gallery

File:National Biscuit Company graham crackers, 1915.jpg|A box of Nabisco food crackers, c. 1915, which was priced at ten cents File:Vegetarian s'mores (3680344160).jpg|A s'more File:Graham cracker crust.jpg|A homemade graham cracker crust File:Mango float (Cebu City).jpg|A Mango float, an icebox cake dessert from the Philippines using graham crackers, cream, and ripe Philippine mango

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See also

• Digestive biscuit
• Bland diet
• Icebox cake
• Mango float
• List of crackers

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Further reading

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External links

• The Origin of Graham Crackers. Snopes.com.
• 7 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Graham Crackers. Food Republic.
• "A Hell of a Cracker" at JSTOR Daily

Categories: American Inventions, Crackers

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