The First Cracker Made By Electricity Is Still A Popular Brand Today (& Hasn't Changed A Bit)

We don't often reflect on history when we're having a snack, but in the case of the cracker with an iconic name or the cracker that was the first to be baked with electric power, it can be fun to dive  into a popular food's origin story. Triscuit crackers were created in 1900 by a Massachusetts man named Henry Perky. The woven wheat squares offered consumers a healthy and delicious snack option that could be used as "bread, toast, crackers or wafers" according to early advertising. Perky named his cracker company the Natural Food Company.

A trip to Niagara Falls that changed the trajectory of Triscuits. It was there that Perky opened the Natural Food Company bakery, touted at the time as "the cleanest and most hygienic food factory on the continent." The factory became an attraction that drew visitors for tours thanks to its lavish interior spaces and its newfangled way of producing crackers: leveraging the hydro-electricity from the falls to operate a cracker-making production line of machines. Triscuit made a splash for being the first and only snack cracker on the market to be baked using electricity — in fact, that's how the crackers got their name.

In 2020, New York City-based writer and comedian Sage Boggs went down a rabbit hole to discover the true origins the Triscuit name. The discovery was published in a series of (what was then) Twitter posts that went viral. Boggs reached out to Nabisco, the current producer of Triscuit crackers, to ask them about where the snack's unusual name came from. 

Nabisco replied that it knew the name was a clever twist on the word 'biscuit,' but that company records no longer existed to explain the 'tri' part, only that Nabisco knew it had nothing to do with the number three. After scouring Triscuit's early advertisements for clues, Boggs — as if struck by a bolt of lightning akin the ones on the cracker's early packaging — put it together. Triscuit is a portmanteau of the words 'electricity' and 'biscuit.' The 'tri' is from elecTRIcity along with the 'cuit' from bisCUIT.

More than 125 years later, Triscuit's recipe remains the same, using only wheat from American farms, oil, and salt for its classic cracker, though additional seasoning is added for flavors like fire-roasted tomato and olive oil or balsamic vinegar and basil. When it comes to store-bought cracker brands, Triscuit remains one of the most popular options on the market. The next time you throw a party, whether you're serving fancy snacks like appetizers or hors d'oeuvres, you can tickle your guests with your pub trivia-level knowledge of the how Triscuit crackers were named.