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Pancakes, Windsor
Mix four table-spoonfuls of flour very smoothly with a little cold milk. Add a pinch of salt, half a small nutmeg, grated, six well-beaten eggs, six ounces of clarified butter, and a pint of new milk, or cream, if the latter can be had. Beat the mixture thoroughly, and set it in a cool place until wanted for use. No butter or lard will be required in frying these pancakes. Time to fry, five minutes. Probable cost, when made with milk, 1s. 3d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A very rich, almost custardy pancake batter: the fat is carried inside the batter rather than in the pan. A few Victorian conventions need translating before it behaves.
- The hinge: no fat in the panSix ounces of clarified butter in the batter is what makes greasing unnecessary, so do not skip or reduce it. Use a well-seasoned or non-stick pan and keep the heat moderate; these brown fast because of the butter and sugarless egg.
- Melted butter and beaten eggsLet the clarified butter cool to just warm before it meets the eggs, and pour it in slowly while beating. Hot butter tipped straight into six beaten eggs will set them into threads.
- A pint means 20 fl ozThis is an imperial pint, 2.5 US cups. With four tablespoons of flour it gives an extremely thin batter, closer to a crêpe or a French omelette than to a stack pancake.
- Clarified butterSix ounces is about 170 g, which is roughly 210 g of ordinary butter before the milk solids and water are cooked off. Ghee will stand in, though it is cooked longer and tastes nuttier.
- Half a small nutmegBetween a half and a full teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg. Grate it yourself; pre-ground nutmeg has lost most of the volatile oil that this batter relies on for flavour.
- "New milk"Fresh whole milk, not skimmed and not soured. Whole milk is the right modern stand-in; cream, as the recipe prefers, makes them noticeably heavier.
- Five minutes to fryMost likely the whole time in the pan rather than per side, though the recipe does not say. A batter this thin sets in about a minute a side over medium heat; left five minutes it turns leathery.
- Resting the batterSetting it in a cool place is not just storage. Half an hour or more lets the flour hydrate and the bubbles from beating subside, which gives a smoother, less rubbery pancake.
- Yield and servingSufficient for five or six, as stated, if each person has two or three thin pancakes. Serve as the period did: rolled with sugar and lemon, or with warmed preserve.
Cassell's hung place-names on dishes to suggest gentility, and "Windsor" carried the strongest suggestion of all — the castle, the court, and by extension the best version of a common thing. There is no evidence connecting this batter to any royal kitchen; the name signals richness, and the recipe delivers it, with six eggs and six ounces of butter carrying only four tablespoons of flour. Clarifying the butter into the batter means none is needed in the pan; it produces a pancake that fries dry and clean, which mattered when pans were iron and washing-up was somebody's whole afternoon. The costing of 1s. 3d. is typical of Cassell's, which priced nearly every entry.