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Cream Pancakes
Whisk thoroughly the yolks of three and the whites of two eggs. Add a small cupful of thick cream, a little sugar, and sufficient flour to make a good batter. Put with it a piece of butter about the size of an egg. Fry in the usual way. This and all other batters are better made two or three hours before they are used. Time to fry, five or six minutes. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A rich, eggy batter closer to a thick French crêpe than a breakfast flapjack. The vague quantities are workable once you fix the two loose ones: the cream and the flour.
- "A small cupful" of creamRead it as about 4 fl oz (½ cup). "Thick cream" here probably means something like British double cream (around 48% fat); heavy or whipping cream is the nearest supermarket substitute, though being leaner it will give a slightly thinner batter.
- "Sufficient flour"With three yolks, two whites and 4 fl oz cream, about 3 to 4 oz (¾ cup) plain flour gives a batter that coats the back of a spoon and just falls from it in a ribbon. Add it gradually; the cream means you need less than a milk batter would take.
- Butter the size of an eggThat is about 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. Melt it and let it cool slightly before whisking it in, or it will set in threads through the cold cream.
- Two whites, three yolksVery likely deliberate rather than a slip. The extra yolk enriches, while surplus white tends towards a tougher, more rubbery pancake. Keep the third white for something else.
- The resting is the pointTwo or three hours' standing lets the flour hydrate fully and the gluten relax, which is why these fry tender rather than elastic. Cover and refrigerate, then stir before using; the butter will have risen a little.
- Frying and timingFive or six minutes is the total for a pancake of some thickness in a well-buttered pan over moderate heat, turned once. A thin crêpe-style pancake in a hot pan is done in well under two minutes a side, so judge by colour, not the clock.
- Yield and servingEnough for two or three, as stated: roughly four to six pancakes depending on pan size. Sugar and lemon was a common way to serve pancakes in this period, though the recipe itself says nothing about it.
This is the luxury end of pancake-making, cream instead of milk and butter worked into the batter rather than only into the pan. The instruction that "all other batters are better made two or three hours before they are used" is one of the small pieces of genuine kitchen science that Victorian compilers passed along without explanation: resting lets the starch absorb liquid and the gluten slacken, and the improvement in texture is real. The costing of 1s. is a reminder of what the book was for. It priced every dish, presumably so that a household could gauge in advance what the day's marketing should come to, though what a shilling for pancakes for two or three would have signalled to its readers is harder to say.