by Nina Furstenau
Beef on the hoof and on the table is something the cattle drivers arriving in St. Joseph in the latter 1880s understood. AFter all, it is American history on the plate, and it's always been what's for dinner at St. Jo.
But consider the pancake.
Surely the cattlemen came off the range in search of breakfast as well as dinner. Pony Express riders leaving from St. Jo's post office and familes on their way west on wagon trains had to fuel that fire in their bellies for adventure early in the day. In 1849 alone, fifty thousand people went west from St. Jo and they almost always started after breakfast.
America's penchant for quick foods to be eaten on the go must have begun in many ways, but one of our earliest convenience foods was the pancake. In fact, pancakes–also called flapjacks, flannel cakes, griddlecakes, journey cakes, johnnycakes, spoon breads, and more–were the original fast food, made early days by American settlers on hoe blades over fires, creating the hoecake. The griddle form of cooking predates oven baking, and the consistency of pancakes varies according to ingredients and available surface (stone, hoe blade, griddle) from fritter-like to custard.
The pancake is not confined to U.S. borders. The artful mix of flour, milk, eggs, butter or oil, shaped by the surrounding culture, creates a flexible staple that defies national borders and holds sway along with such universal foodstuffs as soup, pudding, and bread. In Hungary it is palacsintas, or blini in Russia. It's oppama in southern India and bin-ja tuk in Korea. True, these pancakes vary slighty–there can be coconut on the bottom of the oppama, and the palacsintas is like a French crepe–but every country seems to have a version, partly because of its humble ingredients and that it needs but a hot surfact and a few minutes to create a meal. In Missouri, though, we made it even faster.
St. Joseph is home to the first-ever packaged pancake mix. Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix was conceived and produced here by Chris Russ and Charles Underwood, who bought the Pearl Millings Company in 1889 with the idea of developng ready-mixed, self-rising pancake flour. While attending a vaudeville show they heard the catch tune "Aunt Jemima," and decided that would be the image of their product. Despite contemporary criticism over its stereotyped character, the image stuck. Pearl Milling sold to Davis Milling Company the following year, and in 1925 Qucker Oats bought the brand.
The mix was a hit due in large part to the personality of Nancy Green, the advertising world's first living trademark, and she made appearances all over the country usually heralded by giant billboards, according to the African American Registry. In 1893, the Davis Milling executives risked their business on an all-out promotion at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The constructed the world's largest flour barrel, and Aunt Jemima, in the form of fifty-nine-year-old Nancy Green of Chicago, stood beside it, demonstrating the pancake mix. They picked the right woman for the job. Green’s showmanship while making and serving thousands of pancakes created such a sensation that extra policemen were assigned to keep the crowds moving. After the exposition, Davis received more than fifty thousand orders from merchants all over America and beyond. The African American Registry says that fair officials proclaimed Nancy
Green the “Pancake Queen.”
Until the emergence of Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix, the bulk of flour sales were made in the winter. After the success of the Nancy Green promotion, flour sales were up year-long, and pancakes were no longer considered exclusively for breakfast. Nancy Green maintained her exclusive lifetime contract with R. T. Davis Co. until her death in a car accident in 1923. Quaker Oats Co. of Chicago purchased the mill in 1925.
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