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Graham Griddle-Cakes
One quart Graham flour, one tea-spoon baking powder, three eggs, and milk or water enough to make thin batter.
A skeleton formula of the kind common in 1870s manuals, where the cook was expected to know what a batter should look like. The proportions need a little translating before they behave.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume: a quart is 4 cups, roughly 16-18 oz of graham flour depending on how coarse it is and how firmly it is scooped. Weigh it if you can, since coarse whole-wheat flours vary considerably in packing density.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour with the bran and germ left in, named for Sylvester Graham rather than for any particular grain. Modern stone-ground whole wheat is the closest match; ordinary fine whole-wheat flour works but gives a smoother, less nutty cake.
- The leavening is shortOne teaspoon of baking powder to four cups of flour is well under modern practice, which runs closer to a teaspoon per cup. Nineteenth-century baking powders were also variable in strength. Expect dense, tender-heavy cakes rather than puffy ones, and note that the three eggs are doing much of the lifting.
- "Thin batter"Aim for something that pours in a steady ribbon and spreads on its own, roughly the consistency of heavy cream. Graham flour keeps absorbing liquid, so mix, wait five minutes, then judge and thin again with milk if it has stiffened.
- Griddle heatThe recipe says nothing about heat; medium is safest, and a lightly greased griddle. Whole-grain batters tend to brown faster than white ones, so a griddle hot enough for white pancakes may scorch these before the centre sets.
- YieldA quart of flour thinned to a pouring batter makes a large quantity, on the order of thirty 4-inch cakes, enough for a family breakfast. Serve with butter and molasses or maple syrup.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian minister and dietary reformer whose lectures in the 1830s and 1840s urged coarse unbolted wheat, cold water and plain living on an American public he thought overfed on white bread and meat. By the time Buckeye Cookery was compiled in Ohio in the 1870s, the crusading edge had worn off and graham flour had simply become a pantry staple: the book uses it in gems, breads, puddings and griddle-cakes without comment or argument. The recipe's bareness is characteristic of the whole volume, which was assembled from contributions by Midwestern housewives who assumed their readers had made pancakes before and needed only the proportions, not the method.