Home › The Principles of Cookery › Pancake Balls
Pancake Balls
Dissolve half an ounce of yeast in a little lukewarm milk, and mix it with half a pound of flour, adding as much more milk as is needed to make a stiff dough. Set this in a bowl by the side of the fire, cover it with a cloth, and leave it to rise. Beat two ounces of fresh butter to a cream, rub five or six large lumps of sugar upon the rind of a lemon until all the yellow part is taken off, then crush the sugar to powder, and mix it with the butter; add four well-beaten eggs, and knead all thoroughly with the dough. Make the mixture into small balls, insert a little marmalade or jam into the centre of each, close the aperture, and put them in a warm place to rise for a few minutes longer. Fry them in boiling fat until they are lightly browned, drain well, and dish them on a folded napkin, with powdered sugar sifted over them. Time, about ten minutes to fry the balls. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
This is a yeast-raised, jam-filled doughnut in all but name, built on a two-stage dough: a stiff milk-and-flour sponge first, then butter, sugar and eggs kneaded in once it has risen. Two things decide the outcome — the fat temperature and knowing that the stated frying time is far too long for balls this size.
- Frying time"About ten minutes to fry the balls" is probably a figure for the batch rather than for each ball; ten minutes in the fat would leave a ball this size very dark outside. In fat at 350-360F small enriched balls colour in roughly 2 minutes a side. Fry a single test ball, break it open, and judge the rest from that.
- Fat temperature"Boiling fat" means fat shimmering at about 350-360F, not literally boiling. Below 325F the balls drink oil and go heavy; above 375F the sweetened, egg-rich dough browns before the centre sets.
- The yeastHalf an ounce, given by weight, most likely means fresh compressed ("German") yeast, about 14 g. Use roughly 1 1/2 teaspoons of instant dried yeast, or 2 to 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry proofed in the lukewarm milk as directed. Lukewarm here means blood heat, around 100F.
- Flour and milkHalf a pound of flour is about 2 cups (225 g) of plain flour. The milk quantity is left to judgement: add it a spoonful at a time until the dough is stiff, because four eggs and 2 oz butter are still to come and will slacken it considerably. Expect to work in a little extra flour at the kneading stage.
- Lump sugar and lemonRubbing sugar lumps over a lemon draws out the peel oil, which is the point of the step. Five or six large lumps is roughly 2 tablespoons of sugar; the modern equivalent is to rub the finely grated zest of one lemon into the same weight of caster sugar with your fingertips.
- Filling the ballsUse a stiff, well-set jam or a thick marmalade, no more than half a teaspoon per ball, and pinch the seam thoroughly closed. Loose jam boils, finds the seam and escapes into the fat. A thicker wall of dough at the join helps.
- Second rise"A few minutes" is optimistic once the balls are filled — give them 20 to 30 minutes in a warm place, until visibly puffed and light to the touch. Handle them gently going into the fat so they do not deflate.
- Yield and servingFive or six people, as stated, means about 18 to 20 small balls. Drain on paper rather than a napkin, and dust with icing sugar only just before serving, since the sugar dissolves on a warm surface.
The method — a stiff yeast sponge enriched with butter, eggs and citrus sugar, filled with jam and deep-fried — is generally traced to the Central European Krapfen or Berliner, which British cookery writers of the later nineteenth century are often said to have absorbed by way of German and Austrian confectionery. The name "pancake" may be a survival of an older, looser English usage in which anything fried in fat could be called a pancake, and it has been linked, though speculatively, to the Continental habit of eating such balls at Carnival, immediately before Lent, the same calendar slot that gave Britain its Shrove Tuesday pancake. The trick of rubbing loaf sugar against a lemon rind to capture the peel oil, common in Victorian receipts, belongs to a kitchen that bought sugar in hard cones and broke it up with nippers; grated zest is thought to have replaced it as fine granulated sugar became the household default.