Today, we’ll talk about grapenut and the great derivative pudding. When I landed in Providence in 1972, a unique culinary reality confronted me. Food made with ingredients I had not seen before, combined with strange culinary techniques. It was a new setting, and tried to adjust quickly. Still, my twenty years living in Italy had shaped my taste and eating habits. It was a real struggle initially, but today I am doing a little better. I kept thinking about 1600 when Columbus introduced potatoes, corn, peppers, tomatoes, turkey, beans to Europeans, and wondered how they perceived the new delights. Probably with similar skepticism as mine when introduced to “bird seeds” grape-nut. I called them bird seeds because I could not identify them in the storage room, and someone in the kitchen told me: “they look-like bird seeds.”
Well, here’s my grape-nut story.
One of my cousins opened a restaurant in the Knightsville section of Cranston, Rhode Island, USA. I was a novice in the kitchen, never worked before in Italy, endowed with a good education but no specialized know-how, other than playing soccer and guitar. I wound up in the dishwasher area, washing pots larger than me. I graduated into making strawberry jello from a powder mix. I was swinging it, consistently uniform in taste, crystal shiny and glowing red. A quick dollop of canned whipped cream completed the gem. Yes!
The restaurant employed waitresses in the dining room. One of them, in specific, would consume an abundance of time instructing me in proper English. Her name was Rose. She would alternate waiting on tables and making her salads, well-prepared on her food, and respected by everyone. Her goodness, however, made her very humane and special. Rose made grape nut pudding at home and brought it to serve the patrons in the restaurant’s dining room. She trusted her oven much more than a non-calibrated commercial stove. Everyone raved about it; finally, I sampled it just by attacking the particles stuck on the pyrex’s bottom before washing it. However, unfamiliar to me, I loved the luscious character; Rose’s grape nut pudding won me over. Her pudding never divided into the classic two parts: (custard on top and grape-nut sunk on the bottom), but the texture was uniform. In every spoonful, you would get the custard and the grape-nut equally proportioned. I could not figure out how she did that.
A year later, the job went to me. Under Rose’s oversight, we began making the fabulous concoction representing the characters of New Englanders. I was also able to blend grape-nut into home-made ice cream, a novelty at the time. It’s unique consistency and the taste of the finished delicacy encouraged me to be better. Grape-nut ice cream and grape-nut pudding became staples at the restaurant and lingered after I carried on.
Restaurants ought to consider comfort dessert occasionally listed on their dessert offerings because painted plates and molten lava can be overworked and tiring,
Brief history
Going back in history, we found grape-nut cereal introduced by C.W. Post in 1897. Mr. Post was a competitor of John Harvey Kellogg. Initially marketed as a healthy cereal with valuable nutritional elements for the nervous system and the brain, none of the claims tested. The product enjoyed notoriety through the years because of the health approach and its resistance to spoilage. A couple of examples are the Antarctica exploration in 1933 and again in 1953 during Mount Everest’s first climb. Enjoyed as a ration by our G.I. s during World War II, grape nuts became a household commodity embedded into America’s food culture. The earliest evidence of a pudding made with grape nuts goes back to a 1901 church cookbook publication in Boston. Eventually, popularity did the rest.
What’s in a name
Grape-Nuts contains neither grapes nor nuts but classically made from wheat and barley. So, why is it called Grape-Nuts? As with many great emblems in history, there are two versions of the story. One says that Mr. Post believed glucose, which he called “grape sugar,” formed during the baking process, and combined with the nutty flavor of the cereal, is said to have inspired its name. Another explanation claims that the grain got its name from its resemblance to grape seeds or grape “nuts.” Wherever the name came from, it doesn’t change the fact that Grape-Nuts is packed full of goodness. Made with wholesome ingredients and fortified with vitamins and minerals, a half-cup serving of Grape-Nuts Original cereal is an excellent fiber and provides 100% of your daily recommended whole grain*.
* Nutritionists recommend eating three or more servings of whole-grain foods per day (about 16g whole grain per serving, or at least 48g per day). (Trusted Source)
