Food Non-fiction

In this Food Non-Fiction podcast episode, we talk about the creation of the Rice Krispies Treats. In 1928, Kellogg’s introduced the Rice Krispies cereal to the public. In the same year, the company hired a recent home economics graduate of Iowa State University - her name was Mildred Day. Her job was to test recipes for Kellogg’s and she also travelled around the country conducting cooking schools for the company’s customers. Kellogg’s recipe testers were asked to develop recipes using Kellogg’s cereals. So Mildred Day and her friend Malitta Jensen put their heads together to create something delicious. They created what we now know as Rice Krispies Treats or Rice Krispies Squares, but back then they called it “marshmallow squares”. By the way, they didn’t create the recipe from thin air, it’s likely they tweaked the recipe using either the Puffed Wheat Squares recipe in the 1938 cookbook, It’s Fun to Cook, or they may have used an older recipe from 1916 which was a recipe for something called Puffed Rice Bri