Graham flour is a coarsely ground whole wheat flour that contains the endosperm, the bran, and the wheat germ. Year ago it was considered a health food. Graham flour is named after its inventor Sylvester Graham. He began making graham flour in the 1830s, and promoted it as part of a health movement which encouraged eating vegetarian meals and unseasoned foods.

A hundred years ago graham flour was a popular type of flour, and cookbooks contained recipes for graham bread, graham muffins, graham pudding, and other graham foods.  Several years ago I bought graham flour at my local store and made a couple old recipes that used graham flour for this blog:

Graham Nut Muffins

Steamed Graham Pudding with Lemon Sauce

Orange Nut Bread

Graham Popovers

However, when I recently wanted to make a recipe from a 1924 cookbook that called for graham flour, I looked for it at half a dozen stores and couldn’t find it. I eventually bought some (at an outrageous price) off the internet.  Each of those stores probably sold at least two dozen other types of flour, some of which sounded very exotic to me. But, why no graham flour? Have tastes changed so much across the past hundred years that a food that once was a common staple is now extremely difficult to find?

While searching for information on graham flour, I learned that modern graham flours sometimes have most of the wheat germ removed to prolong shelf life and to help keep it from going rancid. Some websites say that coarsely ground whole wheat flour can be substituted for graham flour, though as with modern graham flours, most of the wheat germ may have been removed. I guess that even if I follow an old recipe calling for graham flour exactly that I’m probably not accurately replicating it. Sigh. . .

Ever struggle to use left-over pancakes? They tend to just languish in my refrigerator (if I don’t immediately toss them).  There actually are lots of ways to use them. Here’s two suggestions in a hundred-year-old magazine:

Other Ways to Use Cold Pancakes

“I use them,” writes our correspondent, “in two ways. First, after they are quite cold I cut them into very thick strips, like noodles, with a very sharp knife, put them in the soup tureen, and pour over them a well-seasoned beef broth. This makes, when served at once, a very good soup. My second way is to make them into a dessert. The cold cakes are spread with a mixture of sugar, ground cinnamon, and raisins, each pancake is rolled with the mixture inside, and they are placed in a baking dish in a row, and quite close to one another, milk is poured over almost to cover them, and then they are put in the oven and baked. This makes a very good pudding, not unlike a bread pudding.”

American Cookery (June/July, 1924)

 

A hundred-years-ago men’s roles and women’s roles were defined very differently. Women were responsible for cooking, and their culinary skills were considered a measure their success. This poem in a 1924 cookbook reminds me of the old saying that “food is the way to a man’s heart.”

I enjoy reading household tips in hundred-year-old magazines and cookbooks. Often the advice is good, and has stood the test of time. However, occasionally an old tip leaves me scratching my head. Like this tip about how to store grated cocoanut. Is it really a tip when the author says that the advice given is guesswork, and that she does not really know how it is done?

And, by the way, what is currently considered the correct spelling for “cocoanut”? I tend to think that “cocoanut” is an archaic spelling, and that it is usually is now spelled “coconut,” but am not sure.