I fell head over heels in love with dark, crisp rye crackers during a recent trip to Scandinavia. These rye crackers are a popular breakfast in Scandinavia, but they make a great snack too. If you're proud of your crackers (and you will be if they're homemade), you're likely to enjoy the toppings even more. It's time to make our own, which is why we picked up a copy of Crackers & Dips. We've bought more boxes of crackers than we're willing to count. These rye crackers are a popular breakfast in Scandinavia, but they make a great anytime snack too.
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The last batches of the cracker were made at the Minneapolis factory in March 2015.Photo: Jen Altman We've bought more boxes of crackers than we're willing to count. The ConAgra company acquired Ry-Krisp in 2013 but discontinued production two years later. Ry-Krisp was a sponsor of 1940s radio shows featuring famed New York hostess Elsa Maxwell and opera star Marion Talley. Several 1940s Ry-Krisp ads were drawn by popular cartoonists from the New Yorker magazine. The product was associated with smart dieting.
#RYE KRISP CRACKERS PROFESSIONAL#
They appeared in professional nursing journals, immigrant newspapers, fishing guidebooks, and general-interest national magazines. Ry-Krisp ads or testimonials evolved over several decades. Other marketers recognized that the cracker's vitamins, fiber content, and long shelf life were more important assets. Some early health food enthusiasts mistakenly felt that "pure food" could ensure good breeding, or even racial purity. Over the years, advertising and consumer interests shaped the appeal of the old-fashioned food. Ralston experimented with the shape of Ry-Krisp, eventually adopting the rectangular cracker it became known for. Ralston also sold "Ralston 100% Whole Wheat Cereal"-a product whose celebrity spokesman was cowboy star Tom Mix. To Edgerly, "R.A.L.S.T.O.N." stood for "Regime, Activity, Light, Strength, Temperation, Oxygen, Nature."Īfter 1926, as one brand among many in a large company, Ry-Krisp benefited from broader advertising. He idealistically mixed food production with utopian philosophy.
An eccentric professor named Webster Edgerly invented the name. There was no actual "founder" named Ralston. Founded in 1902, Ralston Purina was the result of a successful merger of an animal-feed and health-foods firm (Purina) and a breakfast food company (Ralston). Louis bought Ry-Krisp but kept production in Minneapolis. In 1926, the Ralston Purina Company of St. There was a convenient rail siding for national distribution, but trucks shipped the crackers all over the country. In 1922, Ry-Krisp built a new plant at 824 6th Avenue S.E. One ad claimed that the product "exercises the teeth." New marketing strategies for the product said "Physicians recommend it" and that this "health bread" was a "corrective" for constipation. When Peterson sold his company to local investors in 1913, vitamins and nutrition were newly appreciated in the United States. Though new flavors were eventually introduced, including the unsuccessful pizza-flavored Ry-Krisp, the cracker's core ingredients remained the same.Īs a cereal grain, rye offers unique health benefits. Rye kernels were milled into flakes and then combined with water and injections of air to create a crunchy texture.
The Ry-Krisp recipe and method changed little as production expanded. It was common for bakers to live close to their shops. Arvid and Erik lived just a few blocks away. Bakers" was at 2120-24 Lyndale Avenue South. By 1904, the brothers had moved to Minneapolis. While there, Arvid learned baking skills, and then for two years he was a farmer in South Dakota. Peterson, his brother Erik, and their widowed mother arrived in America in 1893. This traditional shape was designed for storing the product on a pole or even a broomstick. Ry-Krisp first came in large, flat, thin rounds with a hole in the center. At the time, crackers were competitive with more conventional breads because baked loaves were inconsistently made. In Sweden, such crackers were inexpensive and lasted well on the shelf. In its first years, the cracker required little advertising, because Scandinavian immigrants knew it as knäckebröd ("crisp bread") from their home countries. For decades, Minneapolis was the one and only location where the product was made. In 1904, immigrant baker Arvid Peterson gave a Swedish-styled cracker a modern American name and introduced the country to Ry-Krisp.
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