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Pan Cakes with Rice
No. 1. 2 cups boiled rice 2 tablespoons melted butter 1/2 cup milk 1/2 cup Gold Medal flour 2 eggs Mix in the order given, beat thoroughly, cook like griddle cakes. No.2.
One pint soft boiled rice, if cold heat with 2 tablespoons milk, mixing thoroughly with a fork; add 1 cup sour milk, 1 cup Gold Medal flour in which there is 1 scant teaspoon of soda and 2 well beaten eggs. No. 3.
One-half pint boiled rice, crushed and beaten gradually into 1 quart milk, 3 cups Gold Medal flour sifted with 3 teaspoons baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt, add 4 tablespoons softened butter and 2 eggs beaten separately, folding the whites in carefully the last thing.
Three separate batters for rice griddle cakes, given in the compressed style of a flour company's promotional book, which assumes the cook already knows how a griddle behaves. The key point common to all three: rice cakes brown slowly and stick readily, so the griddle wants steady medium heat, not the high heat used for plain flour pancakes.
- Griddle heatThe book gives no temperature, only "cook like griddle cakes." A moderate griddle (roughly 350-375F on an electric one, or a heavy skillet over medium) suits them; cooked rice holds moisture, so allow that these may need a little longer to set than a plain flour batter.
- The rice itself"Boiled rice" here means plain white rice cooked soft in water or milk, not parboiled or instant. Long-grain works, but short or medium grain gives a smoother batter. In No. 3, "crushed" means mashed against the bowl with a spoon or fork until the grains break down.
- Sour milk in No. 2This is milk naturally soured in the kitchen; today's pasteurized milk spoils rather than souring cleanly. Use buttermilk cup for cup, or add a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar to a cup of whole milk and let it stand ten minutes. The acid is what activates the soda.
- Soda and baking powder are not interchangeableNo. 2 relies on soda plus sour milk; No. 3 uses baking powder with sweet milk. If you swap the dairy in either one, the leavening has to change with it. A scant teaspoon of soda means slightly under level.
- SaltOnly No. 3 calls for salt. Add about half a teaspoon to Nos. 1 and 2 as well unless the rice was cooked salted, or they taste flat.
- VolumesA pint is 2 cups, a quart 4 cups. No. 3 is much the largest batch, and its quart of milk makes a thin batter by design; it thickens noticeably as the rice absorbs liquid, so thin it with a little more milk if it stiffens between batches.
- Beaten separately, in No. 3Yolks go in with the liquids, whites are whipped to soft peaks and folded in at the end. That fold is what keeps a rice-heavy batter from baking dense, so do it last and do not stir it back down.
- FlourGold Medal was and is an all-purpose flour. Nothing needs substituting; the brand name is simply the book's reason for existing.
- YieldThe book gives none. Nos. 1 and 2 are small batches; No. 3, with a quart of milk and three cups of flour, is several times larger. Serve with butter and syrup, or as a supper cake alongside meat.
Cookbooks published by flour millers were a standard form of American advertising from the 1880s onward, distributed cheaply or free to put a brand name into a household's daily reference shelf; the Gold Medal books, issued by the Washburn-Crosby company of Minneapolis, are among the best known of them. Rice pancakes belong to a wider family of thrift cookery in which yesterday's cooked grain, potato or bread is carried into today's breakfast rather than thrown out, and the presence of three separate versions here suggests the compiler was gathering contributed household formulas rather than testing a single one. The variation between them is instructive about the period: No. 2 assumes a kitchen with soured milk on hand and uses soda to neutralize it, while No. 3 uses commercial baking powder and sweet milk, a shift that was well under way by the turn of the century as chemical leavening became cheap and reliable.