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Pancakes, Without Eggs or Milk
Mix two table-spoonfuls of flour with a small pinch of salt, two or three grates of nutmeg, and a dessert-spoonful of moist sugar. Make a smooth batter, by mixing with the flour, etc., very gradually, half a pint of mild ale, and beat it fully ten minutes. Fry the pancakes in the usual way, and serve them with moist sugar sprinkled between them. Time, ten minutes to fry each pancake. Probable cost, about 4d. Sufficient for two or three persons.
An eggless, dairy-free batter that leans entirely on ale for lift and flavour. The proportions read strangely to modern eyes and the frying time is the one figure to ignore.
- The batter is very thinTwo tablespoons of flour to half an imperial pint (10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups) of ale gives something closer to a thin crêpe batter than a pancake batter. If you want anything with body, expect to work up to roughly 4 oz (about 1 cup) of flour for that quantity of liquid.
- Ten minutes per pancake is wrongA thin batter in a hot greased pan sets in under a minute and needs perhaps 30-60 seconds a side. Ten minutes would leave you with a scorched leather disc. The figure may have been meant as the total for the batch, though the book as printed says 'each pancake'.
- Mild aleIn Victorian usage this means a lightly hopped, faintly sweet, low-bitterness beer, not a modern IPA or a hop-forward pale ale. An English mild, a brown ale or a mild bitter is the right register; heavy bitterness turns unpleasant once the batter browns.
- Moist sugarSoft light brown sugar. It was sold damp and unrefined, and its slight molasses note is part of the point both in the batter and sprinkled between the finished pancakes.
- Beating for ten minutesWith no egg to bind, the long beating works the flour smoothly into the liquid and aerates it. Two or three minutes of brisk whisking followed by a 20-30 minute rest gives a smooth batter with much less effort; whisk again lightly before frying so the ale's gas is still working for you.
- Frying "in the usual way"Would generally have meant a thin film of lard, dripping or clarified butter in a small heavy pan, re-greased between pancakes. A neutral oil works and keeps the dish free of eggs and dairy, which the title suggests is the object.
- Yield"Sufficient for two or three persons" assumes the pancakes are stacked with sugar between them and served as one dish. As written the batter makes only two or three thin pancakes in a small pan, so scale up if it is standing as a course on its own.
Eggless, milkless batters appear throughout nineteenth-century English cookery for two reasons: fast days, when eggs and dairy were set aside, and ordinary thrift in seasons when eggs were dear. Pancakes carried a particular association with Shrove Tuesday, the day for using up the fats and eggs before Lent, so a version that required neither had obvious appeal to anyone keeping the fast rather than clearing the larder. Ale batters were also long established in their own right, in fritters and in coatings for fish, since the dissolved gas supplies lift where no egg is present. The recipe, compiled for households counting pennies as closely as calories, gives the probable cost as about fourpence, and it demonstrates how little is strictly needed to make a batter behave.