Cracker Jack

Manufacturers have an eerie fondness for hypothetically laying their products end-to-end and reporting the results. So we feel obliged to play along and tell you that if all the Cracker Jack snacks ever sold were thus deployed, the trail of peanuts and popcorn would stretch around the Earth more than 69 times. And presumably make a lot of squirrels very happy.

According to corporate lore, an early form of Cracker Jack was introduced in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago’s first World’s Fair, by the candy making firm of F.W. Rueckheim and Brother. Popcorn, Cracker Jack’s primary ingredient, had been invented by American Indians long ago, and some New England tribes had been known to coat their popcorn with maple syrup to preserve it. But coating the corn with molasses, as Frederick William Rueckheim had done, had produced only sticky globs until his brother Louis developed a secret method (still a company secret, by the way) of keeping the popcorn from sticking together. The inspired addition of peanuts made the Rueckheims’ confection a crowd pleaser. Just what they called their mixture at first is unrecorded, but in 1896 Louis gave a sample to a salesman who exclaimed “That’s crackerjack!” F.W. chimed in with “So it is,” and promptly ran out and trademarked “Cracker Jack” as well as the slogan “The more you eat, the more you want.”

At the time, “crackerjack” was a current popular slang adjective meaning “excellent, exceptionally fine or splendid,” and as a noun meant “a skillful or expert person.” The root of “crackerjack” is an antiquated sense of the verb “to crack” meaning “to boast or act boldly,” coupled with “jack,” the proper name used as a generic synonym for “thing or person” (the same sense underlying the automobile “jack”). This “boast” sense of “crack” is still heard in the sort of short, sharp comment known as a “crack,” as well as in the derogatory term “cracker” applied to poor Southern whites, which originally derided white residents of Georgia as boastful and foolishly bold.

March 2, 2008 | Filed Under Food and Drink 

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