January 31, 2003

Plains Folk: Cream of Wheat

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

It would be nice to think, as I cook up a pot of Cream of Wheat, that I were doing something prairie-patriotic. Cream of Wheat originated in Grand Forks, you know. 

And it’s a good winter breakfast, with plenty of that standard lubricant for prairie diners, butter. Some sugar and cinnamon. And I stir in some homemade applesauce.  Maybe then it’s my apples I like better than the Cream of Wheat, and so I’d really like to get some patriotic points for using the product. The problem is, history is against me on that.

Here’s the standard story on the origins of Cream of Wheat. (I rely here mainly on Bill Stolt’s account in a local history, “They Came to Stay.”) In the 1890s the Diamond Mill of Grand Forks had fallen on hard times due to the economic depression that began in 1893.  The head miller, Thomas S. Amidon, convinced the partners (Emery Mapes, George Bull, and George Clifford, Sr.) that they should try making a porridge product using farina, that is, the “purified middlings” of the mill.  George Clifford’s brother, Fred Sr., came up with the name Cream of Wheat because the product was so white.

This tapped into a couple of American sentiments of the time. The first was the concern about health and the role of grains in maintaining it. There were other grainy hot cereals around, such as Mello-Wheat, Wheatena and Post-O. The other appealing aspect was that the new cereal was white. White, especially around the turn of the 20th century, symbolized wholesome middle-class purity in the kitchen.

So Amidon shipped some of the new product to the mill’s broker in New York, who wired back not to send any more flour that was in surplus but “send us Cream of Wheat.” Soon it became the mill’s chief product.

The product has the cachet of humble origins. Amidon cut the first carton containers by hand. Mapes, a printer, did the labels, which included the image of what they then called a “colored chef,” a saucepan over his shoulder.

The company made good in great American success story fashion. In 1939 Cream of Wheat was enough of a bright spot in the midst of the Great Depression that Fortune magazine wrote it up and said, “It is a kind of Yankee fairy story.”

“Few breakfast foods,” recounted the journal, “hot or cold, have embedded themselves as firmly in the American taste as Cream of Wheat.”

Nowadays, though, I’m not digesting my Cream of Wheat so well. Of course, it’s no longer a homegrown enterprise. It was acquired in 1961 by the National Biscuit Company, and after that by Kraft, which today maintains a nice Cream of Wheat Web site (just type in www.creamofwheat.com), history and recipes and all. Kraft holds no sentimental appeal for me.

Moreover, there is the race issue. Cream of Wheat to this day features a smiling black chef on the box. Kraft insists there is nothing derogatory about this, the image is respectful and honorific, but that is bogus. Cream of Wheat advertising historically featured a black cook preparing steaming white cereal for white middle-class kids.  The name of the black cook--I swear I am not making this up, Fortune wrote about it and thought it was cool--was Rastus.

That’s still not what bothers my digestion, though. The first thing historical I read about Cream of Wheat was an article in the Know Your North Dakota series disseminated by the Greater North Dakota Association (state chamber of commerce) in 1960. I read it in the collections of the North Dakota State University Institute for Regional Studies. The articles were distributed to promote state spirit.

Didn’t anybody at the GNDA vet these articles before they went out? Or did they just miss the point entirely? Cream of Wheat moved from Grand Forks to Minneapolis in 1897. After a promising start, it got the heck out of North Dakota. It may be a great business story, but it’s not a great North Dakota story.

OK, I still eat the stuff, but I no longer point to it as a matter of North Dakota pride.

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, isern@plainsfolk.com
Editor: Rich Mattern, (701) 231-6136, richard.mattern@ndsu.nodak.edu 

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