The Library program on Wednesday was about making S’mores using graham crackers. Wasn’t there a Mr. Graham that had something to do about grahams? It was time to do some research!
A graham cracker 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 of cinnamon flavored, and is used as an ingredient in some foods.
The graham cracker was inspired by the preaching of Sylvester Graham who was part of the 19th century temperance movement. He believed that minimizing pleasure and stimulation of all kinds, (not going to mention this!) 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. His preaching was taken up widely in the midst of the 1829-51 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.
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-product it at that time.
The product continues to be mass-produced in the U.S. 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. The dough is sometimes chilled before being rolled out, which prevents blistering and breakage from occurring when the product is baked.
Graham cracker crumbs are used to create graham cracker crusts for pies and moon pies, and is a base, layer or topping for cheesecake. A box of graham crackers in 1915 was priced at ten cents! The graham cracker is a main ingredient in the preparation of the S’more.
Let’s learn some more about Sylvester Graham. He was born in 1794 in Suffield, Connecticut, to a family with 17 children; his father was 72 years old when Graham was born and his mother was mentally ill (with that many kids, I can see why!). His father died when Graham was two years old, and he spent his childhood moving from one relative’s home to another. One of his relatives ran a tavern where Graham was put to work; his experience with drunkenness there led him to hate alcohol his whole life and forswear drinking, which made him an exception among his peers at the time. He was often sick, and missed a great deal of schooling. He worked as a farmhand, cleaner, and teacher before deciding on the ministry as an antidote for his poor health. He went to Amherst Academy in his late 20’s to become a minister, as his father and grandfather had been. He left school a year later because his histrionic manner was scorned by his fellow students.
Leaving school caused him to have a nervous breakdown. He moved to Little Compton, Rhode Island were he met and married Sara Earl, who nursed him back to health. He studied theology privately and in 1828, began working as an itinerant preacher at the Bound Brook Presbyterian Church in Bound Brook, New Jersey. In 1830, he accepted a position at the Philadelphia Temperance Society. He left six months later to focus on preaching health.
Graham’s appointment and conversion to vegetarianism came as the 1829-51 cholera pandemic was breaking in Europe and Americans were terrified it would reach the U.S. The medical opinion best thought to prevent contracting cholera was to eat plenty of meat, drink port wine, and avoid vegetables. People also believed that cholera was a plague, a punishment from God.
The Philadelphia Temperance Society was led not by ministers as most temperance societies were, but by doctors who were concerned with the health effects of consuming alcohol. Graham met two of the other fathers of American vegetarianism: William Metcalfe, an English minister who established a vegetarian church in Philadelphia, and William A. Alcott, a Philadelphia doctor who wrote extensively about vegetarianism and wrote the first American vegetarian cookbook. Graham taught himself about physiology and apparently arrived at his own conclusion that meat was just as much an expression of and spur to gluttony as alcohol was, that they corrupted both the body and soul of individuals and harmed families and society.
His belief was influenced by Francois-Joseph-Victor Broussais’s book that claimed what people ate had enormous influence on their health. Graham was also captured by books written by a German chemist in which the author denounced the use of chemical additives in food and especially in bread. Wheat flour at that time was made from very finely ground flour and brewers yeast (used to make beer).
Like other members of the temperance movement, Graham viewed physical pleasure and sexual stimulation with suspicion, as things that excited lust leading to behavior that harmed individuals, families, and societies. He was strongly influenced by the Bible and Christian theology in his own personal peculiarity mannerism way. He believed that people should eat only plants, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and believed that plague and illness were caused by living in ways that ignored natural law. He urged people to remain calm, and not allow worry or lust to shake them from living rightly_perhaps one of the first people to claim that stress causes disease.
From all the forementioned, Graham created a theology and diet aimed at keeping individuals, families, and society pure and healthy. They should drink pure water and eat a vegetarian diet anchored by bread made at home from flour coarsely ground at home so that it remained wholesome and natural, containing no added spices or or other “stimulants” and a rigorous lifestyle that included sleeping on hard beds and avoiding warm baths. The regimen has been described as an early example of preventive medicine.
The emphasis on milling and baking at home was part of his vision of America in which women remained at home, nursed their families into health and maintained them there, as his wife had done for him. He believed that adhering to such diet would prevent people from having impure thoughts which he believed could cause blindness and early death.
As a skilled and fiery preacher, his peculiar message, combining patriotism, theology, diet, lifestyle, and messages already prevalent from the temperance movement, captured the attention of the frightened public and outraged bakers and butchers, as well as the medical establishment. When the cholera epidemic reached New York in 1832, people who had followed his advice appeared to thrive and his fame exploded.
As his fame spread, “Grahamism” became a movement, and people inspired by his preaching began to develop and market Graham flour, Graham bread, and graham crackers, of which he neither invented nor endorsed any specific product or received any money from their sale.
Grahamite boarding houses were established in the 1830’s. They applied dietetic and hygienic principles to everyday life including cold baths, hard mattresses, open windows, a vegetarian diet with Graham bread and drinking cold water. Animal flesh was banned from Grahamite homes but eggs were allowed to be eaten at breakfast and were an important component of Grahamite diets.
Graham died of complications after receiving opium enemas, as directed by his doctor, at the age of 57 at home in Northampton, Massachusetts. His early death was the source of criticism and speculation. It was said that he had died after violating his own strictures by taking liquor and meat in a last desperate attempt to recover his health.
One of the last persons to visit Graham noted that he had strayed from a strict vegetarian diet and was prescribed meat by his doctor to increase his blood circulation. Before his death, Graham regretted this decision of his doctor’s prescription and “fully and verily believed in the theory of vegetable diet as explained in his works.
After his death, vegetarian distanced themselves from Grahamism. But, nevertheless, his vegetarian message was disseminated far into the 20th century. Food historians cite that Graham was one of the earliest food faddists in America.