Jiffy: the little blue box made only in Chelsea

If you’ve ever made cornbread or muffins from a little blue-and-white box of “Jiffy” mix, it came from Chelsea. The Chelsea Milling Company has been grinding flour here since 1901, and it’s still owned and run by the same family — the Holmeses — generations later. The Jiffy story starts during the Great Depression: Mabel White Holmes, the miller’s daughter-in-law, wanted to help families make decent biscuits without much fuss, so in 1930 she created what’s considered America’s first prepared baking mix. The name came from a kitchen helper’s promise that the biscuits would be ready “in a jiffy.” Today the company is the country’s leading maker of retail muffin mix — and remarkably, every single blue box in the world is still made right here in Chelsea, more than a million and a half of them a day. Keeping it affordable has always been the point: a box of corn muffin mix still costs about a dollar.

The Chelsea Milling Company offers factory tours by reservation at 201 West North Street, Chelsea (jiffymix.com).