Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix

Aunt Jemima pancake flour is the first nationally distributed ready-mix food and one of the earliest products to be marketed through personal appearances and advertisements featuring its namesakes.

In 1889, Charles Rutt and Chris Underwood founded the Pearl Milling Company.

They created the first ready-mixed pancake flour. Charles Rutt chose Aunt Jemima as advertising’s first living trademark.

The product was originally named ‘Self-Rising Pancake Flour’ and sold in bags. In the fall of 1889 Rutt was inspired to rename the mix after attending a minstrel show during which a popular song titled ‘Old Aunt Jemima’ was performed by men in blackface, one of whom was depicting a slave mammy of plantation South.

In 1890 Aunt Jemima Manufacturing Company replaced Pearl Milling Company. Chris Underwood’s brother Bert was responsible for registering the Aunt Jemima trademark.

The Pearl Company had been in financial trouble and their owners were forced, in 1893 to sell their new pancake formula to a larger corporation owned by R.G Davis of Chicago.

Davis promoted both product and image; in the same year the company hired 59 year-old Nancy Green, and African American woman who was a cook for a Chicago judge, to dress in gingham, apron and head bandana to demonstrate their new Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix.

The Davis Company prospered and by 1910, the name of Aunt Jemima was known in all 48 states and had attained such popularity that many people tried to infringe on the trademark rights.

In 1914, the image of Aunt Jemima was so popular that the company was renamed the Aunt Jemima Mill Company.

In 1926 Aunt Jemima Mills Company was sold to Quaker Oats Company for over four million dollars. The image of ‘Aunt Jemima’ remained on the packages.
Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix

History of pancakes in United States

The prototypical American pancakes probably arrived with the earliest English and Dutch settlers, whose pancake traditions dated back to at least the fifteenth century and possibly as far back as prehistoric times.

New Englanders called them flapjacks in honor of the custom of flipping them in the pan with a flick of the wrist.

Pancakes became signature dishes at some casual restaurant chains. In 1889 International House of Pancake was launched in a Los Angeles suburb.

The popularity of pancake restaurants or pancake houses serve packages to suit every taste and time of day, from sweet to savory from breakfast to dinner.

Pancakes became part of fast food breakfast menus in the 1970s, when Jim Delligati, an early MacDonald’s franchisee in Pittsburgh began serving a simple breakfast menu, which included pancakes.

In 1899 Chris L. Rutt and Charles G. Underwood introduced the first ready-mixed commercial food product, which was later renamed Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix.

In the late 1930s, Henri Charpentier, a French chef, brought the recipe for his crepe Suzette with him when he immigrated to the United States.

He is credited with popularizing the French pancake in America. At first they were served with butter, sugar and citrus juice or liqueur. But Americans soon were using maple-flavored syrup and filling them with savory fruits or even chocolate chips.

In 2003 MacDonald’s introduced the McGriddle, which is bacon or a pork sausage wrapped in pancake with syrup.

Later Burger King introduced the Ultimate Breakfast Platter, composed of scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage, a biscuits and three pancakes with syrup.
History of pancakes in United States

History of Pancakes

Pancakes are ancient food. The word pancakes appears in print as early as 1430. Pancakes may have been around since Neolithic humans domesticated einkorn wheat, ground it into flour mixed with bird’s egg and goat’s milk and poured the batter on a heated rock.

It happened before there were pans and long before ovens. The ancient cooks dropped a little gruel on a hot rock of campfire, resulting in thin cakes that were tastier than plain gruel or cakes cooked directly in the embers of the fire.

Perhaps because of this ancient lineage, pancakes are associated with rituals in many countries – Shrove Tuesday, Candlemas, and Chanukah to name a few.

From these rudimentary beginnings sprang a vast array of bread and pancakes, but the two were originally the same.

The ancient Greeks used griddles to cook a flat loaf drizzled with honey called ‘kreion’ and cakes of soft cheese.

The Romans as revealed in the cookbook by Apicius made dishes similar to modern pancakes.

Medieval pancakes, frequently made form barley or rye and lacking leavening, were relatively heavy affairs. They were quite different from contemporary fluffy or tender versions.

Pancake Day is another name for Shrive Tuesday, from the custom of eating pancakes on this day, still generally observed.

Shrive is an old Saxon word, of which shrove is a corruption and signifies confession.

The custom of dining on pancakes on Shrove Tuesday is Roman Catholic origin that on the day when all rejoiced alike in the forgiveness of their sins, all should feast alike on the same simple dish. The pancakes were prepared, denoted by the ringing of the ‘pancake bell’ from the church tower.

Pancakes are an essential part of a classic American breakfast. One of George Washington’s breakfast foods were pancakes that literally in maple syrup. He would plunge each piece of his pancake under the syrup, sopping it good before he ate it.

Pancakes somehow evolved to be exclusively Sunday morning or overnight-guest breakfast fare. Since they are easy to make and there are so many different ways to prepare them, pancakes are a favorite’s hearty food to cook for a crowd.

The first colonial settlers were taught by local Native American to make griddlecakes from Rhode Island Narragansett maize. These griddlecakes soon became a staple, known among the settlers as johnnycakes.

Pancakes prevailed as the household bread in homes with no ovens, only an open hearth.
History of Pancakes