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Cerealine, also known as malt flakes, was a 19th-century American cereal product and the first dry breakfast food in American retailing. Similar to but predating corn flakes, which appeared in 1898 and are first rolled and then toasted, cerealine is corn grits in the form of uncooked flakes. It was originally used by the brewing industry.
More popularly, Toasted Cerealine Flakes, colloquially called simply Cerealine, was also the brand name for raw-flake cereal made from grits by the Cerealine Manufacturing Company of Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, and its successor concern, the American Hominy Company.

History

Corn grits in the form of uncooked flakes, known as cerealine, was used for beer brewing as of at least the mid-19th century, with Aurora, Indiana's T. & J.W. Gaff & Co. distillery building the Cerealine Mill at 607 Jackson Street in Columbus, Indiana, in 1867. Their Cerealine Manufacturing Company moved to Indianapolis, IndianaHart, Rev. Charles Coffin. Joseph Hart and His Descendants (1901), Gideon B. Hart. https://web.archive.org/web/20100123094411/http://hart.paintrock.net/docs/chap4.htm WebCitation archive. sometime prior to 1898,http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/SanbornJP2&CISOPTR=639&CISOBOX=1&REC=9 Indianapolis Sanborn Map #61, 1898, The Digital Collections of IUPUI University Library. https://web.archive.org/web/20110719215512/http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/SanbornJP2&CISOPTR=639&CISOBOX=1&REC=9 WebCitation archive. though the Columbus mill's building remained extant and was restored in the late 20th or early 21st centuryhttp://www.repp-mundt.com/restoration.html Repp and Mundt: Restoration. Includes image of building. https://web.archive.org/web/20110214132321/http://repp-mundt.com/restoration.html WebCitation archive. for use as a cafeteria and conference centerhttp://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/arts/Architec/20centuryArch/pages/R/cumminsengine.htm Cummins Engine Co., Cartage.org, n.d. https://web.archive.org/web/20110606004044/http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/arts/Architec/20centuryArch/pages/R/cumminsengine.htm WebCitation archive. by the engine manufacturing corporation Cummins Inc.http://www.historiccolumbusindiana.org/pics/pics8.htm "Columbus Indiana Pictures and Photos From Bygone Days", p. 8. HistoricColumbusIndiana.org, n.d. Includes image of building. https://web.archive.org/web/20110315032918/http://www.historiccolumbusindiana.org/pics/pics8.htm WebCitation archive. Prior to being annexed by Indianapolis in 1895, the settlement around what was then called the Cerealine Works was known as Cerealinetown.
thumbleftCerealine trading card ("Marguerite"), late 19th century, Moss Engraving Co.
White-corn cerealine flakes as a breakfast cereal were invented, perhaps accidentally, by Columbus, Indiana, mill worker James Vannoy circa 1884TripTrivia.com: Columbus, Indiana Tourism. https://web.archive.org/web/20110717104102/http://triptrivia.com/step4.php?Submit=Submit&State=15&StartCity=29181 WebCitation archive. or 1887.http://genforum.com/vannoy/messages/796.html James Vannoy obituary, The Evening Republican, July 22, 1902, via Vannoy Genealogy. https://web.archive.org/web/20110711084608/http://genforum.com/vannoy/messages/796.html WebCitation archive. Vannoy's 1902 obituary said he found through experimentation a way to run the milled grain through rollers so that it would come out "in thin layers or flakes. He went to his employer, Joseph F. Gent, with the discovery. Gent rather disregarded the wonderful discovery and told Vannoy that he had better been tending to his duties. Later, Gent had the discovery patented, and it was not long until Cerealine was on the market and was being sold in large quantities."
Cerealine was well established as a breakfast food by at least 1897, when the Illinois Farmer's Institute annual report noted that, "Some mills make hominy of white corn, roll it into broad, flat flakes, called cerealine, which are used here as a breakfast dish...."Mills, Charles F. ed. Annual Report, Illinois Farmer's Institute with Reports of County Farmers' Institutes for the Year 1897 (Phillips Bros., State Printers, Springfield, Ill.) p. 122 By this time it had become one of the three most popular cereals of that time, along with cracked wheat and oatmeal. All three were typically sold by retailers who bought cereal in barrel lots and scooped it out to sell by the pound to customers. Toasted Cerealine Flakes was later sold in packages.
In 1902, the Cerealine Manufacturing Company was consolidated with Indianapolis Hominy Mills; the Hudmet Company, of Missouri and Indiana; the Pratt Cereal Mill, of Decatur, Illinois; the Hamburg Milling Company and the Shellabarger Mill and Elevator Company, also of Decatur; the M.M. Wright Company, of Danville, Illinois; the Miami Maize Company, of Toledo, Ohio; and the Purity Oats Company, of Iowa, to form the American Hominy Company, based in Indianapolis.
A 1907 trade journal reported the company was reintroducing the cereal Toasted Cerealine Flakes, commenting that it would sound
thumbCerealine Flakes cook-booklet (1886)

External links

• Additional WebCitation archive, December 10, 2016; click on "View photos..." and "View drawings..." links

Cerealine
Category:Historic American Engineering Record in Indiana
Category:Raw foods