The Republican journal., 1911-05-04
The Buckwheat Cake.
% Slowly but Surely Fading from Oul
National life

AAfC DuCKWnedC lake.
Is Slowly but Surely Fading from Gu,
National Life.
intone threnody for the buckwheat
cake. undone by the patent breakfast
1ooos Of an effete age, which allows it.
self to be cheated with gravel. bran and
sawoust, the buckwheat crop. according
70 mlllers of New Jersey, has been over
produced, not because the farmers raise
700 much, but because the American
people eat too little. Here is a pretty
Sale Tor rising generation. Consider the
oignity OF the buckwheat tradition.
with the first frost came the mystic
rites: The batter crock was set for the
nignt near the fireplace, or, in latter
tlmes, adjacent to the stove. The cakes
Swnlch filled breakfast plate) were
Daked on a'large fiat iron warmer, three
at a time, and turned with a mason's
trowel; none genuine without. Thus all
thls taik about eating 80 at breakfast is
unscnolarly, and associated with a spuri-
GUS cake no larger than modern bread
and,butter plate. Five of the genuine
MADE will fill any jacket tight until noon;
three caused little eyes to bulge Though
d growing boy is on record as having
Deen able to Chew, though he couldn t
swallow any more''); six made grown
man meal, and seven made a regular
gorge. The normal human stomach
would not contain nine, though eight
were known to have been eaten at sit
Jung. The cake itself was rich, golden
brown with crisp rim, particularly
toothsome. When young, one ate the
center, and saw ed the rim to the last, as
we save frosting. With the cake came
Jug OF the purest brew of maple syrup;
others liked them with sausage.
though this was an acquired taste. 1t
was also customary to cut small square
out OF the center of the cake as pool
Tor the syrup. The moral issue was the
tendency OF the cakes to grow cold on
the platter, if cooked faster than con-
sumed; and many a stoical character and
generous disposition was trained on the
yielding OF the warm cake to the young
er children, and the eating of the cold.
For cold cake to warm one was as
friendship to wedlock; wholesome but
unsatisfying. Even the element of do
nestle tragedy once entered when the
cook spoiled the batch by mixing in
plaster of Paris by mistake. The ex
ecrations of whole family follow that
cook. Buckwheat cakes were the entire
breakfast. Other food was a mockery,
and to descend to oatmeal, or even
doughnuts, after such sublime rejection
betrayed a base mind
New Englanders claim the origin and
rise of the art of the buckwheat cake.
Be it conceded, but their descendants,
emigrating westward, carried the craft
and improved it. The practice finally
reached its highest development in that
part Of the middle west known as Ohio,
and in that part of Ohio known as the
western reserve. At least SO Ohioans
say and they are all honorable men. 1t
was there that the properties of the
f1atiron warmer and the trowel were at
length fully apprehended. The turning
of the cake required as subtle fleX of
the wrist as the change from up-bow to
downtown of the violinist; to make the
cake land exactly in the spot where it
was taken up required an accuracy of
aim above the sharpshooter' A Ger
tain great grandfather who retained his
steadiness of wrist far into fourscore
was an object of general veneration and
awe. Nor is the fame of the Ohio buck
wheat cake local. 1t is recorded that an
American woman acting in Paris, and
besought by family of the French no.
bility to marry it's heir, first asked the
heir if he could supply her on occasion
with the Ohio buckWheat cake and maple
syrup. And when the unhappy gentle
man assured her that his chef should
take an hour the Infatuated girl choose
as her husband a youth from Chilicothe.
But the buckWheat cake is fading
from our national life, and what stock of
heroes shall we breed on canned soup?
Sound tocsin on the flatiron warmer!
With the trowe. Wait Somewhere in
the valleys of the western reserve, I'M
troubled by health foods 1--WE stake our
scholarship on it), on a crisp morning of
autumn we shall find batter crock, a
wrist with the cunning fex, and the
serene incorruptable art. uncorroded by
time. Maybe such can be found in rural
New England, but certainly not in any
club or restaurant known to benighted
Bostonians. Boston Transcript.