A graham cracker (pronounced or in America) is a sweet flavored cracker made with graham flour that originated in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

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 cheesecakes and pies.

History

The graham cracker was inspired by the preaching of Sylvester Graham, who was part of the 19th-century

temperance movement The temperance movement is a social movement promoting Temperance (virtue), temperance or total abstinence from consumption of alcoholic beverages. Participants in the movement typically criticize alcohol intoxication or promote teetotalism, and ...

. He believed that minimizing pleasure and stimulation of all kinds, including the prevention of masturbation, coupled with 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. 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 Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works ar ...

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.

Production

The main ingredients in its earlier preparations were graham flour, oil, shortening or lard, molasses and salt. Graham crackers have been a mass-produced food product in the United States since 1898, with the National Biscuit Company being the first to mass-produce it at that time. The Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company also began mass-producing the product beginning sometime in the early 1910s. The product continues to be mass-produced in the U.S. and Canada today. 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 Fermentation is a type of anaerobic metabolism which harnesses the redox potential of the reactants to make adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and organic end products. Organic molecules, such as glucose or other sugars, are catabolized and reduce ...

, whereas contemporary mass-production of the product typically omits this process. The dough is sometimes chilled before being rolled out, which prevents blistering and breakage from occurring when the product is baked.

Uses

Graham cracker crumbs are used to create graham cracker crusts for fruit pies and moon pies, 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 A s'more (alternatively spelled smore, pronounced , or ) is a confectionary, confection consisting of toasted marshmallow and chocolate sandwiched between two pieces of graham cracker, graham crackers. S'mores are popular in the United States an ...

. Graham crackers are commonly used in place of '' broas'' in the traditional Filipino icebox cake mango float.

Gallery

File:National Biscuit Company graham crackers, 1915.jpg, A box of National Biscuit Company food crackers, c. 1915, which was priced at ten cents File:Vegetarian s'mores (3680344160).jpg, A

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 The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

using graham crackers, cream, and ripe Philippine mango

References

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 {{authority control American inventions Crackers (food) es:Pan Graham#Graham cracker