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Cerealine, also known as malt flakes, is an American cereal product originating in the 19th century. Similar to but predating corn flakes, which appeared in 1898 and are first rolled and then toasted, cerealine is corn grits in the form of uncooked flakes. It was originally used by the brewing industry.
More popularly, Toasted Cerealine Flakes, colloquially called simply Cerealine, was also the brand name for raw-flake cereal made from grits by the Cerealine Manufacturing Company of Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, and its successor concern, the American Hominy Company.
White-corn cerealine flakes as a breakfast cereal were invented, perhaps accidentally, by Columbus, Indiana, mill worker James Vannoy circa 1884 TripTrivia.com: Columbus, Indiana Tourism. WebCitation archive. or 1887., The Evening Republican, July 22, 1902, via Vannoy Genealogy. . Vannoy's 1902 obituary said he found through experimentation a way to run the milled grain through rollers so that it would come out "in thin layers or flakes. He went to his employer, Joseph F. Gent, with the discovery. Gent rather disregarded the wonderful discovery and told Vannoy that he had better been tending to his duties. Later, Gent had the discovery patented, and it was not long until Cerealine was on the market and was being sold in large quantities."
Cerealine was well established as a breakfast food by at least 1897, when the Illinois Farmer's Institute annual report noted that, "Some mills make hominy of white corn, roll it into broad, flat flakes, called cerealine, which are used here as a breakfast dish...."Mills, Charles F. ed. Annual Report, Illinois Farmer's Institute with Reports of County Farmers' Institutes for the Year 1897 (Phillips Bros., State Printers, Springfield, Ill.) p. 122 By this time it had become one of the three most popular cereals of that time, along with cracked wheat and oatmeal. All three were typically sold by retailers who bought cereal in barrel lots and scooped it out to sell by the pound to customers. Toasted Cerealine Flakes was later sold in packages.
In 1902, the Cerealine Manufacturing Company was consolidated with Indianapolis Hominy Mills; the Hudmet Company, of Missouri and Indiana; the Pratt Cereal Mill, of Decatur, Illinois; the Hamburg Milling Company and the Shellabarger Mill and Elevator Company, also of Decatur; the M.M. Wright Company, of Danville, Illinois; the Miami Maize Company, of Toledo, Ohio; and the Purity Oats Company, of Iowa, to form the American Hominy Company, based in Indianapolis.
A 1907 trade journal reported the company was reintroducing the cereal Toasted Cerealine Flakes, commenting that it would sound:
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> WebCitation archive, December 10, 2016; click on "View photos..." and "View drawings..." links
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