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Huckleberry Griddle Cakes
1/2 pint huckleberries, 1 1/2 pints flour, 1 teaspoonful salt, 1 tablespoonful brown sugar, 2 teaspoonfuls baking-powder, 2 eggs, 1 pint milk. Sift together flour, sugar, salt, and powder; add beaten eggs, milk, and huckleberries (washed and picked over). Mix into batter that will run from pitcher in thick, continuous stream. Have griddle hot enough to form crust as soon as batter touches it. In order to confine juice of berries, turn quickly, so as to form crust on other side; turn once more on each side to complete baking. Blackberry or raspberry griddle cakes in same manner.
A straightforward berry pancake batter measured in pints, with one unusual instruction: the cakes are turned four times rather than once. A few conversions and one adjustment to the leavening are all it needs.
- The measures in cupsA pint here is a volume measure, not a weight: 1/2 pint of berries is 1 cup, 1 1/2 pints of flour is 3 cups, and 1 pint of milk is 2 cups. Two eggs and 2 cups milk to 3 cups flour gives a pourable batter, which matches the instruction that it should run from the pitcher in a thick, continuous stream.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons for 3 cups of flour is light by current standards; modern pancake formulas commonly use 1 to 2 teaspoons per cup. Period baking powders were generally single-acting and varied in strength from brand to brand, so increase to about a tablespoon if your cakes come out dense.
- Griddle heat"Hot enough to form crust as soon as batter touches it" is roughly 375F on an electric griddle, or a heavy pan where a drop of water skitters rather than sits. The instant crust is what keeps the berry juice inside instead of bleeding into the pan and burning.
- The four turnsThe turns -- As written the cake is turned three times: once to set the second side, then once more on each side. On a modern thermostatically even griddle one flip is enough.
- Fold the berries, do not stir themAdd the huckleberries last and with as few strokes as possible. Beaten into the batter they break and stain the whole batch grey-purple, which is the usual reason these cakes look muddy.
- Huckleberries and substitutesTrue huckleberries (Gaylussacia) have larger, crunchier seeds and a more resinous flavour than blueberries; blueberries are the usual stand-in and work directly. If using frozen berries, add them still frozen and unwashed, or they will thaw and bleed.
- YieldAbout 18 to 20 cakes of four inches, enough for four to six people.
Griddle cakes studded with wild berries were a summer dish before they were a year-round one, because huckleberries were gathered, not grown. The name has always been loose in American usage, covering both the true huckleberries of the genus Gaylussacia and the wild lowbush blueberries of Vaccinium; cookbooks of this period rarely distinguished them, and the recipe's casual offer of blackberries or raspberries in the same batter shows the author treated any small soft fruit as interchangeable. Commercial cultivation of the highbush blueberry only began in the early twentieth century, and huckleberries proper resisted cultivation altogether, so a book like this assumed a reader with access to a berry patch or a market stall in July and August. The instruction to seal the cake quickly to "confine juice of the berries" is the practical heart of it, and it is the same reasoning behind sealing a piece of meat over high heat: crust first, then cook through.