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Sour Milk Fried Cakes
One cup sugar, one cup sour milk, two tablespoonfuls melted lard, one teaspoonful soda, vanilla, nutmeg and salt to taste, two eggs, well beaten; dissolve the soda in a little hot water, then mix with the sour milk, and mix as soft as you can roll them out; cut in the form of a jumble.
A plain sour-milk doughnut of the kind kept on hand for supper or a late tea. The original assumes you know two things it never says: how much flour, and that these are deep-fried.
- The missing flourNo quantity is given, which is deliberate — "mix as soft as you can roll them out" is the instruction. With this much liquid expect roughly 3 to 3 1/2 cups of flour, added a little at a time until the dough just holds together and can be patted out. Err soft; a stiff dough fries heavy and dry.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, thick and acidic. Cultured buttermilk is the direct stand-in. Pasteurised milk soured with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice works but is thinner, so you may need slightly more flour.
- SodaOne teaspoon of baking soda is correct against a cup of acidic milk. Dissolving it in hot water first, as directed, prevents streaks of unreacted soda; once it hits the milk the batter begins working, so mix and fry without long delay.
- LardTwo tablespoons melted lard is the shortening in the dough. Butter or a neutral oil substitutes without trouble. The frying fat is unstated; lard is the likeliest choice in a kitchen of this period — any fat with a high smoke point serves.
- Frying, which the recipe omits entirelyFrying, which the directions leave unstated -- the title supplies it. These are deep-fried, not baked or griddled. Fat at about 365F, two to three minutes, turning once when the underside is deep gold. Below about 350F they soak; above 375F the outside colours before the centre sets.
- "Cut in the form of a jumble"Jumbles were small rolled cookies, commonly shaped as rings and sometimes as knots or twists; a ring is what is meant here. Roll about 1/3 inch thick and cut with a doughnut cutter, or improvise with a tumbler and a thimble for the hole. The hole is functional, letting the middle cook through in the same time as the edge.
- Seasoning to tasteNutmeg is the defining flavour of this family of fried cakes; a rounded half teaspoon of freshly grated is a fair starting point, with a teaspoon of vanilla and a half teaspoon of salt.
- YieldAbout 18 to 20 rings plus holes. They are best within a few hours; sugar them warm if you want them sugared at all.
Sour-milk fried cakes belong to the era when every household had milk turning on its own schedule and soda to answer it — the acid in clabbered milk and the alkali in bicarbonate together supplied the lift that yeast had previously done more slowly. That pairing, which spread through American home baking after chemical leavening became cheap and reliable in the middle of the nineteenth century, is why so many books of this period specify sour milk as an ingredient rather than a fault. The name "jumble" is older than the doughnut and is generally traced to a small cake made in varying shapes — rings, knots, twists — so that here it survives chiefly as a description of the form.