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Pancakes with Sour Milk
One pint sour milk, one pint cold water, one teaspoon salt, one large teaspoon soda; make a smooth batter, then add two eggs beaten separately. Eggs can be omitted.
A village receipt written for cooks who already knew what pancake batter looked like: no flour quantity, no fat, no griddle instructions. The gaps are assumed knowledge rather than omissions, but they need filling in.
- The missing flourThe receipt never states a quantity because the cook was expected to add flour until the batter poured thick and smooth. For the quart of liquid here, expect roughly 4 to 4 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour; stop when the batter ribbons off the spoon rather than runs.
- Sour milk means buttermilkIn a house with raw milk, sour milk was simply milk left to clabber on its own. Pasteurized milk left out does not clabber the same way; it spoils. Use cultured buttermilk, which supplies the acid the soda needs.
- Why it is cut with waterA pint of water to a pint of sour milk thins the batter for a lacier, tender cake, though the total acid available to the soda is unchanged by dilution. Straight buttermilk with no water gives a thicker, tangier pancake and will need more flour still.
- The sodaOne teaspoon of baking soda against a pint of soured milk is in the normal range, and it is the only chemical leavening here. Mix the batter and cook it promptly, since the gas is generated the moment acid meets soda and a batter left standing loses its lift.
- "Beaten separately"This means yolks and whites beaten apart, the whites conventionally taken to soft peaks and folded in last, though the receipt does not spell that out. Without the eggs you get a plainer, flatter cake, but the soda still works.
- Fat and the griddleNo shortening goes into the batter, so the griddle carries it. The receipt gives no heat: modern practice for pancakes is a moderate griddle, roughly 350 to 375F, greased lightly between batches. Turn when the surface bubbles have opened and the edges look dry.
- YieldA quart of liquid makes a great many pancakes, on the order of two dozen four-inch cakes, enough for six to eight people. Halve it for a small household.
Sour-milk pancakes belong to the era before commercial baking powder made every household's leavening uniform. Milk that turned in the pantry was an asset rather than a loss, and the alkaline soda that neutralized it produced lift while cutting the sourness. The pairing of saleratus, later bicarbonate of soda, with clabbered milk was the workhorse chemistry of nineteenth-century American baking, and it survives in the buttermilk pancake and biscuit. The closing line, that the eggs can be omitted, is the honest note of a kitchen where eggs were seasonal and hens went off lay in winter.