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Newport Breakfast Cakes
Two tablespoons sugar, piece of butter size of an egg, two eggs, one and one half cups of milk, three cups of flour, two teaspoonfuls of baking powder. Stir all well together and bake in a quick oven, a little salt.
A plain quick-bread batter of the sort that filled gem pans on New England breakfast tables. The instructions assume you know what vessel to use and how thick the batter should be, so those are the gaps worth filling.
- Butter the size of an eggA standard nineteenth-century measure equal to about 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons. Soften or melt it before stirring so it disperses rather than staying in lumps.
- A quick ovenRoughly 400F, perhaps a little higher. These cakes rise on baking powder alone and want a brisk heat to set them before the leavening is spent.
- What to bake them inNothing here says cakes, muffins or a sheet. "Breakfast cakes" of the period could mean gems and muffins or griddle cakes; this batter is stiff enough for greased gem or muffin pans, and a dozen standard cups will take it. Reckon on something like 18-22 minutes.
- Batter consistencyThree cups of flour to a cup and a half of milk gives a stiff drop batter, thicker than pancake batter. Stir only until the flour disappears; beating it smooth toughens the crumb.
- Baking powder strengthTwo teaspoons to three cups of flour is on the light side by modern standards, where a tablespoon per three cups is usual. Expect a modest rise rather than a dome.
- The saltTacked on after the instructions. Half a teaspoon, mixed into the flour rather than added at the end.
- YieldAbout 12 muffin-sized cakes. Best eaten hot from the pan; like most quick breads they stale quickly.
"Breakfast cakes" in American cookbooks of the later nineteenth century covered almost anything hot, quick and bread-adjacent set on the morning table: gems, muffins, batter cakes, drop cakes. The genre leaned heavily on chemical leavening, and such recipes multiplied as commercial baking powders became cheap and reliable through the 1870s and 1880s; before that, a hot bread at breakfast meant either yeast set the night before or saleratus with sour milk. Place-names attached to such recipes, Newport among them, are generally a matter of local attribution or fashionable association rather than any documented origin. The instructions here are brief enough to assume a reader who already knew what pan to use and what a quick oven felt like.