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Crumb Griddle-Cakes
The night before using put some bread crumbs to soak in one quart of sour milk; in the morning rub through a sieve, and add four well-beaten eggs, two tea-spoons soda dissolved in a little water, one table-spoon melted butter, and enough corn meal to make them the consistency of ordinary griddle-cakes. It is better to beat yolks and whites separately, stirring the whites lightly in just before baking.-Mrs. W. E. Scobey, Kankakee, Ill.
A thrift recipe with one genuinely vague quantity: the amount of bread. Everything else is straightforward once the dairy is sorted out.
- Sour milkThis means naturally clabbered raw milk, acidic enough to react with the soda. Cultured buttermilk is the standard substitute; a quart of pasteurized milk left on the counter will spoil rather than sour, so do not attempt that.
- How much breadThe original never says. Judge by the finish: enough stale crumbs that a quart of buttermilk absorbs them into a thick, soft slurry — roughly 3 to 4 cups of dry crumbs from a day-old loaf. The cornmeal at the end is the real thickening control.
- Rubbing through a sievePresumably to break down bread that has swelled into lumps, and to hold back crust. A few pulses with an immersion blender or a stiff whisk does much the same work in less time.
- SodaTwo teaspoons is a lot of leavening, but it is matched to a full quart of acidic milk. Dissolve it in water as directed. The original adds it before the butter and meal; if the batter is to stand at all, holding the soda back until nearer the end will preserve more of the lift.
- CornmealFine or medium yellow cornmeal, not corn flour and not the self-rising kind sold in the South, which carries its own soda and salt. Add it a few spoons at a time until the batter ribbons off the spoon.
- SaltNone is listed. A scant teaspoon in this volume of batter keeps the cakes from tasting flat.
- Griddle heatThe recipe gives none. A medium-hot griddle works: a drop of water should skitter, not sit. Watch these more closely than a plain flour batter; they can catch.
- YieldA quart of milk makes a large batch, in the range of two dozen cakes: a family breakfast.
Buckeye Cookery (published in 1877 as Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, developed out of the 1876 Centennial Buckeye Cook Book) is built on the assumption that nothing edible leaves a kitchen unused, and crumb cakes are that principle applied to the bread box. Where households baked their own loaves, stale ends accumulated, and soaking them overnight in soured milk both softened them and supplied the acid needed to activate saleratus or soda. Cornmeal was cheap and plentiful in the Midwest. The recipe carries the name and town of its contributor, Mrs. W. E. Scobey of Kankakee, Illinois — the book was assembled from donated receipts, and the credits functioned as both citation and community roster.