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Dromedary Griddle Cakes
1 cup flour 1 tablespoon sugar 1 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 egg, beaten ¾ cup milk 3/4 cup Dromedary Cocoanut Into a bowl sift flour, sugar, salt and baking powder, add egg, milk and cocoanut. Beat batter until light, and fry on one side until all air bubbles have burst, turn over and brown. Use griddle moderately hot.
A plain baking-powder griddle cake with shredded coconut worked into the batter. The method is standard; the only fussy parts are the griddle heat and the batter's thickness.
- Milk quantityThe milk is printed as "34 cup," which is not a usable measure; it is almost certainly 3/4 cup, a normal proportion to one cup of flour. The coconut will take up some liquid as the batter stands, so a spoonful or two more milk may be wanted.
- SaltA full teaspoon of salt to one cup of flour is high by modern taste, particularly with sugar and sweetened coconut in the mix. Half a teaspoon is closer to current practice.
- Dromedary CocoanutThe brand's packaged shredded coconut, most likely of the moist, sweetened type sold in tins and cartons at the period. Today's sweetened flake is the nearest match; unsweetened desiccated coconut works but the cakes will taste noticeably plainer.
- "Moderately hot" griddleThe book gives no temperature. Aim at the cooler end of the usual pancake range: coconut and sugar both scorch, so these will colour faster than a plain batter.
- When to turnThe instruction to wait until all the air bubbles have burst is the hinge. Coconut makes the batter heavy and slow to set, and turning early tears the cake; the surface should look dry at the edges before the spatula goes in.
- Fat on the griddleNo fat is specified; a cook of the period would most likely have used a seasoned iron griddle rubbed with fat. On a modern nonstick surface use a very thin film of butter or oil, wiped rather than poured, or the coconut on the outside fries darker than the cake within.
- YieldOne cup of flour gives roughly eight cakes of three inches, enough for two people at breakfast. The batter does not hold well; mix it just before cooking.
Dromedary was the grocery brand of Hills Brothers Company of New York, importers best known for dates, with moist shredded coconut sold in tins and cartons alongside, and this page comes from one of the promotional booklets such firms issued by the thousand in the early twentieth century. Hence a chapter of "Cocoanut Breakfast Dishes": coconut in waffles, muffins and griddle cakes, places where a nineteenth-century cook would have expected it only in cake and pudding. Shredded coconut had become a cheap everyday staple once commercial machinery took over the grating and packing, and booklets like this one appear to have been among the means by which it moved from the dessert course to the breakfast table.