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Pancakes, Queen Of
Make a batter as follows. Beat two ounces of butter to a cream, add gradually two eggs well whisked, a table-spoonful of castor sugar, and two table-spoonfuls of flour; mix thoroughly, and stir in half a pint of milk. Butter four small plates, pour an equal quantity of the batter on each plate, and bake in a quick oven for twenty minutes. Arrange two of the cakes side by side on a dish, spread a layer of jam on each, and cover with the other two pancakes; cut in quarters and sprinkle with sifted sugar.
A thin, egg-rich batter baked on plates rather than fried in a pan — closer to a small Dutch baby than to a griddle pancake. The batter is very loose, and that is intended.
- The hinge: build the emulsion slowlyCream the butter properly, then add the whisked egg a little at a time so it does not split. Only once the flour and sugar are in should the milk go in, or the batter will curdle and bake patchy.
- A quick ovenRead that as roughly 400-425F (200-220C); the Victorian term covers a range. The high heat is what makes the thin batter puff and set at the edges.
- Twenty minutes is the outsideOn modern thin metal or ceramic plates these are often set and browned at 12-15 minutes. Check at twelve; overbaked, they turn leathery and will crack when stacked with the jam.
- Castor sugarSuperfine sugar. Ordinary granulated works in the batter, though it creams less smoothly; for the finishing dusting use confectioners' or superfine.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups. With only two tablespoons of flour, the batter will look alarmingly thin — that is correct.
- "Buttered plates"The instruction implies plates that could take oven heat, such as tin or enamel. Use 6-7 inch pie tins, shallow cake tins, or genuinely ovenproof plates; many modern glazed dinner plates may crack at this heat.
- AssemblyWarm the jam slightly so it spreads without tearing the cakes, and assemble while everything is still hot. Cold, these deflate and toughen.
- YieldFour plate-sized cakes make two filled sandwiches, cut in quarters — eight small wedges, serving four.
The name is decorative rather than descriptive: nineteenth-century cookery books freely attached "queen of" and "royal" to enriched versions of plain dishes, much as queen cakes were simply small rich cakes. What distinguishes this from an ordinary pancake is that it is baked, not fried, a change that runs through English domestive cookery as closed ranges and reliable ovens replaced open hearths, though the evidence here is too slight to press the point, and one that let a cook produce four uniform cakes at once instead of standing over a pan. Victorian cookery compilations for middle-class households are full of such refinements on everyday dishes: the same batter, more butter and egg, a spoonful of jam, and a new name.