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Graham Pancakes
1 egg (well-beaten) 1 cup sour milk 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon salt (dissolved in warm water) 1 cup Graham flour 1½ cups Five Roses flour.
An ingredient list rather than a method, in the terse style the Five Roses book uses for its pancake pages. The proportions work, but you need to supply the technique and, almost certainly, more liquid.
- The batter as written is too stiffTwo and a half cups of flour to one cup of sour milk plus a little warm water gives a dough, not a pour. Add milk or buttermilk until it ribbons off the spoon; you may well need a further cup or more.
- Sour milkThis meant naturally soured raw milk, which today's pasteurized milk will not reliably produce. Use buttermilk, or stir 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar into 1 cup milk and let it stand 10 minutes.
- Graham flourCoarsely ground whole wheat with the bran and germ left in. Stone-ground whole wheat flour is the closest match; ordinary fine whole wheat works but gives less of the nubbly texture that was the point.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian hard-wheat white flour from the mill that published the book. Substitute all-purpose flour; unbleached is nearer the original.
- Soda and saltOne teaspoon of soda to one cup of sour milk is on the generous side; a cup of soured milk will neutralize about half that, and any excess can leave a faintly soapy note. Dissolving the salt in warm water is simply to disperse it; whisk it into the milk with the egg.
- MixingCombine the two flours with the soda, beat egg and soured milk together, and stir the wet into the dry only until it comes together. Rest the batter 10 minutes so the bran hydrates, then thin again if it has tightened.
- GriddleThe book gives no cooking directions; by modern practice, a greased griddle at about 375F, or medium heat on a heavy pan. Batters with a share of whole wheat tend to color a little faster, so watch the first cake and drop the heat if it browns before the surface bubbles.
- YieldAbout twelve 4-inch pancakes once thinned — three to four servings.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal, one of a genre of flour-mill cookbooks that reached Canadian kitchens by the hundreds of thousands in the early twentieth century; recipes were solicited from customers, which explains the compressed, note-to-self style of pages like this one. Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the American temperance and dietary reformer of the 1830s who preached coarse unsifted wheat meal against the fashion for fine white bread; by the time this book appeared his crusade had faded but his name had stuck to the flour, and to the crackers. In a book published to sell white flour, a Graham pancake that still calls for a cup and a half of Five Roses is a neat commercial compromise — the wholesome grain of the reformers, cut with enough refined flour to keep the cakes light.