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Pork Pancakes
Beat thoroughly the yolks of two fresh eggs. Stir in two table-spoonfuls of flour, and beat to a smooth paste. Add a pinch of salt and the third of a pint of milk, and let the batter stand for an hour or two. Cut the remains of cold roast or boiled pork into thin slices, and cover these to keep them moist and free from dust. When the pancakes are to be fried, whisk the whites of the eggs to a firm froth, and add them to the batter. Dip the slices of pork into this, and fry them separately in hot fat for a minute. Surround each slice with a spoonful of batter, fry it again until set, and when it is done on one side turn it over to the other. Serve the pancakes on a hot dish, and send good brown sauce made from the trimmings of the pork to table with them. If liked, the pancakes can be made with fresh meat, but in this case it will be necessary to fry the slices of pork before they are dipped into the batter. Three or four pancakes may be fried at once in an ordinary omelet pan. Time to fry the pancakes, four minutes each. Probable cost, 6d., exclusive of the cold meat. Sufficient, allow two or three for each person.
A leftovers dish dressed up as a fritter: slices of cold roast pork jacketed in a risen batter and fried. The batter is the whole point, so treat it like a soufflé mixture rather than a pancake mix.
- The hinge: fold the whites in lastThe batter is made with yolks only and rested, then lightened with stiffly whisked whites immediately before frying. Fold gently and use it within a few minutes; if it stands the froth collapses and you get a flat, heavy coating.
- A third of a pintAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is about 6 2/3 fl oz — roughly 3/4 of a US cup. With only two tablespoons of flour and two yolks the batter is very thin indeed, which is why it needs the whites for body.
- Resting the batterThe hour or two of standing lets the flour hydrate and the gluten relax, giving a tenderer coating. Cover it and refrigerate rather than leaving it out, and bring it back to room temperature before adding the whites.
- Frying fat and heatThe recipe says only 'hot fat' and gives no temperature. Shallow frying in lard, dripping or oil in the region of 350-365F suits it: cooler and the batter soaks, hotter and the outside colours before the interior sets. A cast-iron or nonstick skillet stands in for the omelette pan.
- The two-stage fryThe first dip-and-fry seals the slice, then more batter is spooned around it and set. Work with three or four at most so the pan temperature holds, and keep the finished pancakes on a rack in a low oven rather than stacked on a plate.
- Using fresh pork insteadThe variation with uncooked meat requires the slices to be fried through first, as the four minutes in batter will not cook raw pork. Take fresh slices to 145F internal and let them rest before they are dipped.
- The brown sauceMade from the trimmings and bones of the roast: brown them, deglaze, simmer with a little onion and thicken lightly. A well-reduced pork or veal stock gravy does the same job and is worth the effort, since the batter itself is bland.
- Yield and costThe recipe says only to allow two or three pancakes per person; it does not state how many a two-egg batter yields, though on these quantities it is unlikely to stretch much beyond two or three servings. The 'probable cost, 6d.' is the book's routine costing note, and is expressly exclusive of the cold meat.
Cassell's devotes a great deal of space to what to do with yesterday's joint, and this is a characteristic answer: cold pork made presentable by frying it inside a batter enriched with separated eggs, then sauced with a gravy built from the trimmings so that nothing is wasted. Whisking whites separately and folding them in at the last moment was well established in English cookery by the time this was written, and was routine advice for fritters, omelettes and light puddings alike; how much it owed to French practice is not something this recipe can settle. The word "pancake" is used loosely here, as it often was in Victorian cookbooks, to mean anything cooked flat in a pan with batter rather than the thin sweet pancake of Shrove Tuesday. The instruction to cover the sliced meat "free from dust" is a reminder that this was written for kitchens without refrigeration, where cold meat sat in a larder and was expected to be eaten within a day or two.