{"id":4619,"date":"2016-01-25T08:31:33","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T15:31:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cooking.pfeist.net\/?p=4619"},"modified":"2025-08-05T08:44:42","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T14:44:42","slug":"250-cookbooks-blue-ribbon-malt-extract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cooking.pfeist.net\/?p=4619","title":{"rendered":"250 Cookbooks: Blue Ribbon Malt Extract"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cookbook #145:<\/strong> Blue Ribbon Malt Extract,<\/em> Premier Malt Products, Inc., Peoria Heights, Illinois, 1951.
\n<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Blue<\/p>\n

How did this booklet get into my collection? I am clueless. I just wrote a couple posts about bagels and touched on the ingredient “malt syrup” \u2013 so not surprisingly, Blue Ribbon Malt Extract<\/em> caught my eye when I searched for a book to cover this week.<\/p>\n

What is malt syrup? I found online that malt syrup<\/a> is (generally) made from barley. The barley is soaked in water just until it sprouts and then it is dried \u2013 a process called malting<\/em>. The sprouting process develops several different enzymes that break starches into sugars.\u00a0 Malt syrup is mostly the sugar maltose<\/em>, along with complex carbohydrates and a bit of protein (and some vitamins, see below). It’s about half as sweet as sugar.<\/p>\n

The opening section of Blue Ribbon Malt Extract reads:<\/p>\n

“Blue Ribbon Malt Extract is a valuable addtion to the diet, and a delightful means of bringing new taste to everyday cooking. Its use in bread, for instance, will decrease the leavening time, and produce a larger, lighter loaf of better texture, deeper crust, and more appetizing appearance. Bread and other goods baked with Blue Ribbon Malt Extract will also keep their freshness and tastiness much longer.”<\/p>\n

Except for bagels, I’ve rarely seen malt syrup called for in breads. And, I don’t remember malt syrup being touted as a health food supplement. But sure enough, wikipedia states<\/a> that it was used as a nutrition enhancer for children in England in the first half of the twentieth century. It tastes better than cod liver oil (given for the same purpose) but it tastes a lot better. A tablespoon serving has 10% RDA niacin, 6% vitamin B6, and 6% riboflavin (source: WolfAlph<\/a>). In The House at Pooh Corner<\/i>, malt syrup was Tigger’s favorite food!<\/p>\n

In each recipe in this book, only a small amount of malt syrup is called for: only teaspoons and tablespoons. Please carefully study the photo below, taken from this cookbook, of a can of Blue Ribbon Malt Syrup:<\/p>\n

\"Malt<\/p>\n

3 pounds<\/strong> of malt syrup in a can! Now, that’s a lot when you use so little for each recipe or for nutrition! What did people do<\/em> with all that malt syrup?<\/p>\n

Beer. The answer is beer. I figured this out by googling “malt syrup” and finding almost all of the hits leading to homebrewing sites. I also liked the following, a current review of this book on Amazon<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“If you wrote to the Blue Ribbon company [in the 1950s] and asked for recipes, they would send you this [book] . . . wonder of wonders, a few weeks later you would get a letter. The envelope had no return address. You opened it up, and there was a single typed sheet with home brew recipes. That was what you really wanted. You could then happily brew to your heart’s content.”<\/p>\n

During prohibition, people used malt extract in their recipes for homebrew. Note that this book was published in 1951, decades after prohibition was repealed: homebrewing was still illegal in the US until 1978. The company that produced Blue Ribbon Malt Extract had to keep a low profile. Modern Pabst Blue Ribbon beer is connected with Blue Ribbon malt extract.<\/p>\n

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Back to my cookbook, Blue Ribbon Malt Extract<\/em>. I decided to make Bran Muffins for this blog post.<\/p>\n

\"Bran<\/p>\n

I searched local stores and found malt syrup at Whole Foods (but nowhere else):<\/p>\n

\"Barley<\/p>\n

Since I want a good feel for the flavor of malt syrup in baked goods, I decided to use 3 tablespoons of the syrup instead of just 1 teaspoon. The jar of malt syrup says to use 1 tablespoon less liquid for each 4 tablespoons of malt syrup in a recipe, so I have adjusted the recipe for this amount.<\/p>\n

Malt Syrup Bran Muffins<\/strong><\/a>
\nmakes 8 muffins<\/em><\/p>\n