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Buttermilk Cakes
Take one pint of buttermilk, and stir into it as much flour as will form a dough, with one table-spoonful of dissolved carbonate of ammonia. Roll the dough out in sheets, cut the cakes, and bake them in a moderate oven. The carbonate of ammonia may be obtained at any of the druggists; it is the common smelling-salts, without any of the aromatic drugs. It never imparts any taste to the food, as the heat disengages the carbonic acid gas and the ammonia.
A plain buttermilk biscuit leavened with baker's ammonia rather than soda. The recipe is workable, but the flour quantity is left entirely to the cook and the leavening behaves differently from what most modern bakers expect.
- Carbonate of ammoniaThis is baker's ammonia (ammonium carbonate, also sold as hartshorn), still available from baking suppliers and some pharmacies. Modern smelling salts may be ammonium carbonate with added aromatics or an ammonia solution, so they are not a reliable substitute for a food-grade product. Roughly 1 teaspoon per pound of flour is the usual modern rate; a tablespoon dissolved into a pint of buttermilk is on the generous side.
- Why it must be thinBaker's ammonia works only in thin, dry goods. The gas and the ammonia have to escape completely during baking, so roll the sheets no thicker than about a quarter inch. In a thick, moist cake the ammonia stays trapped and the result smells sharply of window cleaner, which is why the confident claim that it "never imparts any taste" holds for crackers and biscuits but not for anything soft-crumbed.
- "Dissolved"Ammonium carbonate lumps dissolve slowly and unevenly. Crush to a powder and dissolve in a spoonful or two of the cold buttermilk before adding it to the rest, or you get bitter pockets.
- A moderate ovenNo temperature is given; 'moderate' is conventionally read as somewhere around 350-375F. For thin cut cakes of this kind a hotter oven, nearer 375-400F for 10-12 minutes, gives better lift and a drier bite, since the ammonia releases quickly under heat.
- How much flourThe original leaves this entirely to the cook. Expect to need considerably more flour than the volume of buttermilk suggests: add until the dough is firm enough to roll into sheets, rather than soft like a biscuit dough.
- No salt, no fatThe original gives neither. Half a teaspoon of salt per pound of flour makes a considerable difference; a little butter or lard rubbed in will soften the crumb, though it moves the result away from the crisp cracker the method suggests.
- The buttermilkCultured buttermilk from a carton is generally more acidic and thicker than the churn buttermilk of the period. Unlike soda, ammonium carbonate does not depend on the acid for its gas, since heat alone decomposes it; here the buttermilk is largely a matter of flavour and tenderness.
- YieldDepends on the cutter and how thin the sheets are rolled; expect several dozen small cakes. They keep well in a tin and are best eaten within a few days, or split and dried further.
Ammonium carbonate reached domestic kitchens by way of the chemist's shop, and at least one Victorian cookery writer thought it worth reassuring readers that the alarming-sounding salt was safe once heated, since it breaks down entirely into gas and vapour. It is one of the oldest chemical leaveners in European baking, generally traced to hartshorn shavings, the ammonia-yielding product of heated deer antler, long before purified carbonate was manufactured. Its usefulness lay in speed and in leaving no alkaline residue, which is why it survived in thin dry goods -- Scandinavian and German Christmas biscuits, English cream crackers -- even after baking powder took over everything else.