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Irish Pancakes
Beat eight eggs, separating the yolks from the whites. Warm a pint of cream in a rather large stewpan, over a slow fire; strain, and stir the beaten yolks to the cream and three ounces of butter, previously melted; add two ounces of pounded sugar, and dredge in six ounces of flour. When mixed quite smooth, stir into the batter grated nutmeg and lemon-peel, with the frothed whites of four eggs. Fry in butter. Pour only enough batter in the pan to make a thin pancake, and, when done, serve the pancakes hot, piled one on another, in a hot dish. Time, about five minutes to fry. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A rich, thin, crepe-style batter built on cream rather than milk. Nothing here is difficult, but the egg counts and the cream temperature are where it goes wrong.
- The egg count is deliberateThe egg count -- Eight yolks go into the batter but only four of the whites are frothed and added. That leaves four whites over; keep them for meringue or an omelette.
- Warm, not hot, cream"Over a slow fire" means blood-warm at most. If the cream is near simmering when the yolks go in, they set into threads. The straining comes before the yolks in the recipe's own order, so it will not rescue them; take the pan off the heat before the yolks meet the cream.
- Imperial measuresA pint here is the imperial 20 fl oz, about 2 1/2 US cups. The dry weights are honest weights: 3 oz butter is 6 tablespoons, 2 oz sugar about 1/4 cup, 6 oz flour roughly 1 1/3 cups scooped and levelled. Use a scale if you have one.
- Cream and pounded sugarVictorian "cream" for cooking was generally nearer modern single or light cream than double cream, though the fat content was not standardised. "Pounded sugar" is sugar broken down fine in a mortar, so caster or superfine is the closest substitute; it dissolves in the warm batter without grittiness.
- Lemon-peelGrated peel means zest only — the coloured outer layer. Any white pith turns the batter bitter, and there is no sharp fruit flavour here to hide it.
- The frying time is for the batchThe frying time -- "About five minutes to fry" is too long for one thin cake and too short for a whole plateful, so read it loosely. A thin cake in a hot buttered pan wants roughly a minute on the first side and thirty to forty seconds on the second. Fresh butter for each one, wiped out if it browns.
- Folding the whitesThe whipped whites are the only lift in the recipe. Fold them in at the last moment and cook straight away; a batter left standing half an hour will have gone flat and the pancakes will be leathery.
- ServingFive or six portions, as stated; expect roughly twelve to sixteen thin pancakes from this quantity. Piled on a hot dish they steam each other soft. The recipe gives no finish; sugar and lemon were a common accompaniment to sweet pancakes in period books.
The name says less about Ireland than about the cream. What marks it as Victorian is the arithmetic: eight eggs, a pint of cream and three ounces of butter for six people, with the cost given as 2s 6d, a sum that would have put the dish squarely in a comfortable middle-class household rather than a cottage kitchen. A price is given at all because such readers were expected to budget a dish before they cooked it. Nutmeg and lemon peel were the standard sweet-pancake seasoning across the whole century, inherited from a much older English tradition of spicing rather than fruiting a batter.