Triscuits

Henry D Perky had a weak stomach. By doctor’s orders, he constrained himself to a diet of raw vegetables and boiled wheat, grim fare indeed. Though Perky’s ambitions were many—he was a lawyer, an inventor, and an aspiring rail tycoon—his salvation came baked atop a hot griddle. 

In the year 1902, Henry D Perky was awarded the patent for a cracker made of filamentous wheat. 

Plenty of other ambitious bakers had mashed wheat flat and made it hot. But never before had the wheat been stranded, tempered, and woven. For this particular cracker, iron teeth separated thin strands of wheat and pinned them in place while baking. At pinch points, these strands baked into each other, while the valleys of the iron provided gentle pressure and room for aeration. Cradled thus in the firm embrace of its iron loom, the Triscuit was born.

It took twelve years to bring Triscuits to market. At the time, the notion of a pre-sliced cracker was new. Factory workers, unable to go home for lunch, needed something small and convenient they could take with them. The National Biscuit Company was on the rise, swallowing up bakery after bakery, bringing wheat to the nation in a variety of forms: Fig Newtons, Barnum's Animal Crackers, and the Nabisco. In 1928, when they acquired the Shredded Wheat Company, Triscuits took their place on the shelf, another heavyweight in what would become Nabisco's stable of immortal snacks.

The Triscuit is a triumph of modernity. Its name is a nod toward electricity, the power behind its method of manufacture. Back then machines were still held innocent. Wars were still fought on horseback. It was, in a manner of speaking, possible to know everything. All this, of course, went to shit during the course of the twentieth century. But the Triscuit, simple as food may come, did not have to learn. It was already perfect. At the turn of the century, it was a herald of progress. During the depression, it was a meal. And after the depression, it was anointed with oil, its third and final ingredient. Today, against all odds, the Triscuit still holds a place on countless snack trays, implacable, purposeful, and plain.

The scent of a freshly opened box is dusty and clean at the same time, air permeated with the pulverized particulate of whole grain wheat. The cracker, 1.75" square, is a full quarter inch thick in the center, tapered at the edge where those iron claws pinched off each portion. The web of wheat is laminated like a HEPA filter. A bite reveals the cross section, seven even layers of natural filaments. The flavor of unadulterated wheat makes for a calm and even baseline from which hints of salt barely emerge. 

In contrast to the soporific palate, the rhythm of textures is urgent and syncopated. Like wood, it snaps easily along the grain, but resists when broken horizontally, the entire densely-interconnected structure failing at once, breaking and splintering along meandering fault lines that threaten total destruction. In the mouth, shattered threads jostle and split at random intervals, a chaotic dispersion of smaller and larger fragments ground into dust between enthusiastic molars. It is like eating a snare drum solo: a single note, repeated over and over in endless varieties of timing and intensity. This rudimentary paradiddle, is the paragon of spun wheat's percussive potential. This rhythm is the heart of its enduring crunch.

At the grocery, the original Triscuit may be flanked on all sides by its many-flavored siblings: a cavalcade of herbs, cheeses, and aromatics, some thinner, some smaller. These flavors were developed to compete with the hyper saturated tongue seducers up and down the aisle. But it is the original, as bland in box design as it is in flavor, that somehow draws the eye. It is as stalwart and fibrous as it's ever been, a structural marvel, built differently than the many sog-prone crackers that wilt and dissolve in the slightest dampness. No matter how soupy the salsa, how heavily-piled the cheese and tomatoes, how interminable the patter of polite laughter delaying the next bite, Triscuits hold strong. Triscuits snap between the teeth. Triscuits scrape your body clean from the inside out with their criss-crossed web of whole wheat husks, proven over a hundred years, our tireless digestive companion.

In a world where little lasts, you can still eat a Triscuit.