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PANCAKES, SOUP OF (a German recipe)
Fry a couple of plain pancakes in the usual way, and be careful to put no more fat into the pan with them than is required to prevent them sticking. Drain them on an inverted sieve, or press them between two sheets of blotting-paper, to free them from grease, and cut them into narrow strips, about an inch long, or if preferred into small diamonds or squares. Throw them into a saucepan containing two pints of clear brown gravy soup, boiling hot; let them boil quickly for a minute or two, and serve. Time, ten minutes to fry the pancakes. Probable cost of pancakes, 4d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A thrifty garnish soup that depends entirely on two things: pancakes thin enough to shred cleanly, and a broth clear enough to be worth looking at. Everything else is assembly.
- The hinge: add the strips at the last momentSliced pancake absorbs stock fast and turns to pulp. Have the soup at a rolling boil, drop the strips in, count to sixty and ladle out. The recipe's "minute or two" is an upper limit, not a target.
- "Plain pancakes" means unsweetened crepesA plain pancake here is a thin, unsweetened egg-and-milk batter cooked as thinly as the pan allows. A sweetened American-style pancake or anything with a raising agent will not work; it swells and clouds the broth.
- Clear brown gravy soupA brown meat stock served clear, often clarified; in modern terms, beef consomme or a well-made, strained beef broth. Two imperial pints is 40 fl oz, about 5 US cups. Season it properly before the strips go in, since they add bulk but no flavour.
- Blotting-paperKitchen paper does the same job. Period blotting paper was plain and absorbent; modern stationery blotting paper may carry dyes or sizing, so do not substitute it.
- Grease controlThe instruction to use minimal fat is not fussiness. Any fat left on the pancakes floats out as slicks on the surface of a clear soup and ruins the point of clarifying it. Wipe the pan between pancakes rather than adding more butter.
- CuttingRoll each cooled pancake into a loose cylinder and slice across at about 1/4 inch, then cut the ribbons down to the inch length the recipe specifies (or cut small diamonds or squares, as it also allows). Let them cool first — warm pancake tears and sticks to itself.
- YieldFour to five as a first course, as stated. Two pancakes is a modest amount of garnish; three or four gives the bowl more substance if it is standing in for a light supper.
This is Frittatensuppe, the Austrian and southern German soup of shredded pancake in clear beef broth, known in Swabia as Flädlesuppe — Flädle being a dialect diminutive for a little flat cake. The technique of cutting a cooked pancake into ribbons to garnish consommé belongs to a wider Central European family that includes noodles, semolina dumplings and shredded liver, all serving the same purpose: making a bowl of clear broth into a course. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, compiled for Victorian British households, drew freely on continental practice, and the careful attention to draining grease reflects the period's respect for a properly clarified soup, which took hours to make and could be spoiled in a moment by a film of fat. The costing in pence is a reminder of the book's audience — a manual for cooks working to a household budget, where fourpence for the garnish was a figure worth printing.