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PANCAKES (a la Celestine)
Heat two table-spoonfuls of apricot jam in the oven. Beat and strain four eggs, mix a quarter of a pound of flour very smoothly with them, and add half a pint of milk gradually, making a perfectly smooth batter. Melt a small piece of butter in a small omelet-pan, pour in two table-spoonfuls of the batter, let it spread all over the pan, then fry the pancake for two or three minutes until lightly browned and cooked through. Turn the pancake on to a dish, and keep it hot. Melt a fresh piece of butter in the omelet-pan, pour in some more batter, and proceed as before till all the batter is used. Then, very quickly, put a tea-spoonful of the hot jam in each of the pancakes, roll them up very neatly, pile them on a white napkin in a hot dish, sift sugar thickly upon them, and serve at once.
A plain crêpe batter, rolled around warm apricot jam and dusted with sugar. The only technical demands are batter consistency and pan temperature.
- Weights and volumesA quarter pound of flour is 115 g, roughly 1 cup scooped lightly. The half pint is an imperial half pint, 10 fl oz or 1¼ US cups, so the batter is thin by design.
- Rest the batterCassell's has you cook immediately, but 30 minutes' rest lets the flour hydrate and the gluten relax, which gives more tender crêpes and fewer bubbles. Strain the finished batter if any lumps remain.
- The hinge is pan heatTwo tablespoons of batter must spread across the pan the moment it lands, then set. Medium-high heat and a pan that has been properly preheated before the butter goes in; if the first one is pale and leathery, the pan was too cool.
- Two or three minutes is longOn a modern burner a thin crêpe takes 45-60 seconds on the first side and about 30 on the second.
- "A small omelet-pan"A 7-8 inch pan with shallow sloping sides, which is what a modern crêpe pan is. The recipe melts a fresh piece of butter for each pancake; wiping the pan with butter between them uses less.
- Warming the jamHeating apricot jam loosens it so a teaspoon spreads without tearing the pancake. A small saucepan or 20 seconds in a microwave does the same job; sieve it if you want the lump-free classic finish.
- Keeping them hotStack on a plate over a pan of simmering water, or hold at 200F, covered. The napkin in the serving dish absorbs steam and keeps the underside from going soggy.
- YieldAt the two tablespoons per pancake the recipe specifies, this batter gives roughly 16-18 crêpes. Sift the sugar at the table; it dissolves quickly on hot pancakes.
The name belongs to the nineteenth-century French repertoire, where Célestine attaches to more than one preparation built on thin pancakes -- most familiarly a clear soup garnished with fine shreds of unsweetened crêpe. In the sweet form recorded here the pancakes are filled with jam, rolled and sugared. Any connection to a particular cook or patroness named Célestine is traditional rather than documented. Apricot jam was a common sweet filling of the period.