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Fried Cakes
One coffee-cup of not too thick sour cream, or one of sour milk and one table-spoon of butter, two eggs, a little nutmeg and salt, one tea-cup sugar, one small tea-spoon soda dissolved; mix soft. Mrs. S. Watson, Upper Sandusky.
A typical 19th-century doughnut dough leavened with soda and the acid in soured dairy. The book assumes you know what a soft fried-cake dough feels like, so the most important quantity is the one it never states.
- No flour is given"Mix soft" means adding flour until the dough is just stiff enough to roll and cut but still tacky — roughly 3 to 3 1/2 cups for this quantity of liquid, though it depends on your cream. Add it gradually and stop early; extra flour makes heavy, bready cakes that drink fat.
- Cup sizesIn period American cookbooks a coffee cup is generally reckoned larger than a teacup: roughly a cup to a cup and a quarter against about 3/4 cup. Read this as roughly 1 1/4 cups sour cream and 3/4 cup sugar.
- Sour cream and sour milkThe original means naturally soured raw dairy, which was thinner and sharper than modern cultured sour cream. Cultured buttermilk is the closest match for the sour-milk version; for the cream version, thin commercial sour cream with a spoonful or two of buttermilk. The acid is what activates the soda, so do not substitute sweet milk or cream.
- Soda"Soda" is bicarbonate of soda — baking soda, not baking powder. "Dissolved" means stirred into a little water (or into the sour milk) before it goes in, which helps avoid yellow-brown specks of unreacted soda in the finished cake.
- Work quicklyOnce soda meets the sour dairy the leavening begins immediately and does not wait. Mix, roll, cut and fry without letting the dough sit, or the cakes will be dense in the middle.
- FryingFat at 360-370F, deep enough that the cakes float and turn freely. Below 350F they absorb grease; above 380F the outside colours before the centre sets. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- ShapingRoll about 1/3 inch thick. Rings, twists or diamonds cut with a knife all work; the recipe itself leaves the form to the cook.
- YieldAbout two dozen cakes of ordinary doughnut size. They are best within a few hours of frying, and were often rolled in sugar while still warm.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, published in Marysville, Ohio in 1877, was assembled from contributions by named local housewives — here Mrs. S. Watson of Upper Sandusky — which likely explains why the measurements are casual and the flour left to judgement: the recipes were written by cooks for cooks who already knew the dough. Fried cakes of this sort predate chemical baking powder in American home use and rely on the older method of pairing an alkali with an acid already present in the kitchen, soured milk or cream. Soda cakes, biscuits and griddle cakes were common destinations for milk that had turned. Nutmeg was a common doughnut spice of the period.