1893 - Food And Drink

Food And Drink

American Cereal Company acquires Pettijohn's California Breakfast Food, which has promoted its wheat flakes with advertisements attacking oatmeal (see Johnson, Boswell, 1755). "My horse eats oats," one Pettijohn ad has said, and it has gone on to quote a college president to the effect that while horses and Scottish highlanders may be able to digest oats without difficulty, in most people oatmeal can produce colic, flatulence, biliousness, rash, "eruptions," and other troubles. American Cereal pays $12,340 for Pettijohn and its emblem—a brown bear bearing on its flank the words, "Bear in Mind Our Trade Mark"; it spends another $50,000 to improve the Pettijohn plant and promote the cereal in ways that do not disparage oatmeal (see Quaker Oats, 1901).

Shredded Wheat is pioneered by Nebraska lawyer Henry D. (Drushel) Perky, 50, who finds that boiled wheat helps his digestion. Having enlisted the help of Watertown, New York, designer Harry Ford to create a machine that will shred wheat, he travels to Denver, persuades his brother John to manufacture the patented machine, goes into business with John under the name Cereal Machine Company to produce hand machines that people can use to make their own wheat biscuits, and opens a Denver restaurant where all foods served contain Shredded Wheat (see 1894).

Cream of Wheat is introduced at Grand Forks, North Dakota, where Thomson S. Amidon, chief miller at the Diamond Mill, has persuaded the mill's owners George Ball, Emory Mapes, and George Clifford to produce a cereal made of "purified" wheat middlings (see LeCroix, 1865). It takes 15 minutes to cook (30 minutes for infants), and when New York flour brokers Lamont, Corliss & Company receive 10 cases they wire back within 3 hours for another 50. Some 550 cases are sold the first year, and although Cream of Wheat will not show a profit until 1900, the cereal will be so popular by 1897 that its makers will move their operations to Minneapolis (see 1902).

Aunt Jemima pancake mix gains notice at the Chicago fair. St. Joseph, Missouri, miller R. T. Davis has acquired C. L. Rutt's mix of 1889 and improved it by adding rice flour, corn sugar, and powdered milk so that it can be prepared by adding only water; he sets up a 24-foot high flour barrel, arranges displays inside the barrel, and engages former Kentucky slave Nancy Green, 59, to demonstrate the Aunt Jemima mix at a griddle outside the barrel (see 1910).

Baker Godfrey Keebler dies at Philadelphia September 9 at age 71. The company he started in 1853 will grow to be the second-largest U.S. producer of cookies and crackers.

The Columbian Exposition at Chicago features an entire electric kitchen. Each saucepan, broiler, etc. has its own electrical outlet, but the electrical appliances burn out easily, repairmen are hard to find, and such appliances will not come into wide use for another 30 years.

The first electric toaster is invented in Britain, but few homes are wired for electricity and demand is too small to warrant production (see GE, 1908).

Toronto entrepreneur William Neilson, 49, produces his first commercial batch of ice cream in a plant on Gladstone Avenue that will continue for nearly 100 years. Son of a Scottish-born farmer, Nelson studied to be a machinist, moved to Toronto 3 years ago to open a grocery store, went bankrupt earlier this year, rented a house at $4 per month to keep a roof over his family, worked on his brother's North Dakota farm at $4 per day, returned after the harvest, used all the money he could scrape up to buy seven cows plus some used, hand-cranked ice cream machines, and next summer will sell 3,750 gallons, netting $3,000. Neilson will buy a three-story house on Gladstone Avenue in 1904, use its attached factory to increase production, and launch a line of chocolates to keep his 25 employees occupied. By the time Neilson dies in 1915, his company will be turning out a million pounds of ice cream per year and 500,000 pounds of chocolates.

Caramel maker Milton S. Hershey visits the Chicago fair and sees chocolate-making machinery exhibited by J. M. Lehman Company, a Dresden firm. Now 36, Hershey buys the equipment, has it shipped to his Lancaster, Pennsylvania, plant along with additional equipment from Germany, and begins experiments with it (see 1891; 1894).

C. W. (Charles William) Post, 38, develops Postum—a nutritious beverage of wheat berries, molasses, and wheat bran designed to replace coffee. A Texas inventor, real estate developer, and farm-machinery salesman whose health and financial fortunes have declined, Post is an ulcer patient at the Western Health Reform Institute, operated since 1876 by John Harvey Kellogg, and has followed Kellogg's regimen of hot baths, exercise, and foods that include a Caramel Coffee made of bran, molasses, and burnt bread crusts (such imitation coffee drinks have been available for decades). After more than 10 months without apparent improvement, he has asked Kellogg to let him market the Caramel Coffee in lieu of paying his bill, but Kellogg has refused (see 1895).

Milwaukee's Pabst beer wins a blue ribbon at the World's Columbian Exposition and will hereafter be sold as Pabst Blue Ribbon (see 1889).

Mott's apple cider and vinegar win top honors for quality at the World's Columbian Exposition (see 1842; Duffy-Mott, 1900).

Poland Spring water wins the Medal of Excellence at the World's Columbian Exposition (see 1845; 1904).

Maxwell House Coffee gets its name. The 24-year-old hotel at Nashville, Tennessee, serves its guests coffee made from a blend perfected by Joel Cheek, who receives permission to market his blend under the name Maxwell House (see 1882). Now 40, Cheek goes into partnership with John Norton to start a wholesale grocery firm specializing in Maxwell House coffee; former Cheek salesman John Neal will join them in 1900, Norton will leave in 1901, and the Nashville Coffee and Manufacturing Company will later become Cheek-Neal Coffee Company (see Postum Co., 1928).

Thomas Lipton registers a new trademark for the tea he has been selling since 1890 (it is sold only in packages, never in bulk). Over the facsimile signature "Thomas J. Lipton, Tea Planter, Ceylon" are the words, "Nongenuine without this signature" (see 1909).