1920s Baking Mixes - Aunt Jemima Company Cake

A Cake Mixture With Many Possibilities--"Add Water and Bake"

---

LAYER cakes, cup cakes, drop cookies and cottage puddings come out of Aunt Jemima's latest creation. This product contains flour, sugar, shortening, powdered skim milk, baking powder and salt. all the cook needs is water to make a batter. In the Institute we used one and one-eighth cupfuls to a package, which is more than the directions call for. This made a simple, plain cake, which is best eaten as a cottage pudding or covered with a good frosting. One package (three and two-third cupfuls sifted) is sufficient for the usual cake, at about 16 cents.

Possible Improvements

One or two eggs added to the batter, decreasing the amount of water by a couple tablespoonfuls, makes a richer cake, which browns beautifully, and such ingredients as coconut, nuts, chocolate and spices give delightful variations. Any frosting improves the cake, whether baked in layers or in muffin pans as cup cakes. Do not stint the flavoring in either cake or frosting. Almond in the cake and chocolate frosting are an excellent combination. Delicious apple cake and fruit puddings are produced from this mixture when combined with the fruit and baked in a deep cake pan--easy desserts which are quick to make and good to eat.

How It Analyzed

The flour shows an analysis of 5.7 per cent protein, 11.6 fat, 26.9 sugar and 2.5 per cent total minerals. The 2.2 per cent milk sugar represents a little over a half pint of skimmed milk to the package. The baking powder content is slightly higher than in the cakes made at home, but not excessive for a packaged product, which must stand shipping and storage and cannot carry egg easily.

--New York Tribune, April 23, 1922

The product in question is "Aunt Jemima Company Cake." I couldn't find any links to the company cake online…just lots of pancake ads that are cute until you get to the creepy racist stereotypes.


--El Paso Herald, December 6, 1918

The same page also has references to "Muffin Makins" (an instant muffin mix) and "Flako" (an instant pie crust) as additional convenience flours.

The busy housewife and business woman alike (shall we include the bachelor who sometimes likes to play at cooking in his apartment) find in these flours a key to variety that requires but little skill or time in the turning." For the "unskilled laborer" gets expert assistance through these mixtures….The Institute does not for a moment advocate emergency cooking as a regular procedure, but it finds a useful and legitimate place for such well prepared products in short-cut cookery.
--New York Tribune, April 23, 1922

Anyway, this was all news to me, since Bisquick's official site certainly implies it's a revolutionary baking mix. Even more astoundingly, Aunt Jemima's official site claims its Buttermilk Pancake & Waffle Mix came out in 1957 and its "Just Add Water" version came out in 1970. Yet the "just add water" pancake mix was EVERYWHERE by 1918 and probably earlier. The fine print in the ad above even notes you can use it for waffles! The Food Company Cookbooks has a good writeup on Aunt Jemima and an even better writeup on Jenny Wren Flour, another precursor to Bisquick.

President Harding and Segregation - 1921

When people complain about how awful the world is, these kind of articles put things into perspective for me. This is from an African-American newspaper in Minnesota (I didn't see prominent references to it in other newspapers at the Library of Congress site).

WOULD SEGREGATE AMERICANS.

President Harding made a speech Wednesday at Birmingham, Ala., on the race problem, which displayed remarkable misinformation on the subject due to the fact that he has evidently studied from one side only.

Of course Mr. Harding is right, when he says that the colored man should have political, educational and economic rights, but he is wrong when he says that he is not entitled to every right to which every other group of Americans is entitled. The president has no right to say that one-eight of the population of the United States must be differentiated in any way from the other seven-eighths…

The President erroneously confounds "social equality" with amalgamation. He says that amalgamation cannot be, but it exists, it has always existed and always will exist. The combined efforts of the law and public opinion have failed to prevent the mixing of the races. Throughout the ages there has been so much racial mixing that today the scientists and ethnologists agree that there is no such thing as a pure race. In no other country on the globe has there been more racial mixing than in the United States which is the melting pot of the world. The majority of the people of the United States are mixtures of various races and the greater part of this majority is composed of people with more or less Negro blood. The racial mixing in the South is almost wholly illegitimate as the laws make marriage between the races a crime.

Now as to social equality, that exists in some part of the United States and it is only in those parts of the country which have more or less of social equality that the colored people have any rights which the white people respect. The very words, "social equality" imply that all rights are secure. In the South there is neither equality nor respect for rights. The contempt for the colored man is largely due to his inferior social status, which extends through all human relationships in that benighted section of the country. Even at the speech of the President the colored people were segregated and the dispatches say, "In the white section there was a silence which was absolute and stony, only one light flutter of applause came when the President said, "The Negro should be encouraged to be the best possible Negro and not the best possible imitation of the white man." This seemed to please a few of the whites who evidently visioned a "good Negro" of slavery days, who hat in hand bowed low when "ole massa" approached."…

THE APPEAL does not believe, as Mr. Harding puts it, that there is a "fundamental, eternal and unescapable difference between the races." To do so would be to challenge God and Christianity. It is a distinct departure from the ideals of the founders of the Republic who declared that "all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."…There are just as many differences between the individuals of any one race as their (sic) are between the people of any number of races. The idea of race differentiation in any form in the law, in the functions of the government, and in public association is contrary to a just concept of a democracy in which all men are presumed to be equal, and is repugnant to the highest ideals of the Christian's God, who is declared to have made of one blood all nations of men. If Mr. Harding is right, Christianity is wrong…

--The Appeal, Saint Paul, Minnesota, November 5, 1921, page 2

In other news, the Japanese Premier Takahashi Hara was assassinated, as reported by newspapers around November 4 and 5, 1921. The whole cabinet resigned.

Flashback Friday - Charles Gilpin - February 20, 1921 - March 6, 1921

So here's a mini-saga involving probably the first really big African-American stage star, Charles Gilpin. I think it's a reminder that, whatever horrible societal problems we have now, some things are SO much better today than they used to be.

DRAMA LEAGUE VOTES TO HONOR GILPIN

'Emperor Jones' Star is Included Among Those to Be Guests at Annual Dinner.

--The New York Times, February 21, 1921

Charles Gilpin was to be honored at the Drama League's annual dinner, but people weren't sure if he should be invited, given his race. Some people said he should get a "nice letter" instead of an invitation.

Just wow. My stomach hurts.

Then it looked like Gilpin was indeed going to decline as gracefully as he could:

GILPIN MAY NOT BE DRAMA LEAGUE'S GUEST

Negro Star Has Other Invitations for Night of Dinner--Does Not Want to Socialize.

--The New York Times, February 22, 1921

IMDB doesn't show any movies under Charles Gilpin, however, and a quick Google search didn't find anything. Might have to track down a biography to see how truthful his excuses were.

Several days later, this rather diplomatic article followed, where he agrees to attend the dinner.

Gilpin to Attend Dinner.

--The New York Times, February 28, 1921

Thankfully, a somewhat happy ending...though it's sad that it was ever any issue at all:

GILPIN GETS OVATION.

Forced Twice to Respond to Plaudits of Drama League Diners.

--The New York Times, March 7, 1921

You can read a bit more about Charles Gilpin at BlackPast.org and Find a Grave

I'll post a few updates from the Casa Grande Bulletin tomorrow.

*All articles believed to be in public domain per US law.