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Buckwheat Cakes (Quart buckwheat flour pint) (II)
1 quart buckwheat flour. 1 pint wheat flour. 1/2 1/2 teacup yeast. A pinch of salt.
Make into a batter with warm water. Set to rise. Thin the batter with a cup of milk (to make them brown well). Add a pinch of soda and bake quickly on a griddle. Butter and send to the table hot.--Mrs. D.B.K. Another Recipe for the Same. 1 pint buckwheat. 1/2 pint sifted meal 2 teaspoonfuls of salt. 4 tablespoonfuls of yeast. 1.1/2 pint lukewarm water.
Beat well and set to rise till morning.--Mrs. Dr.J.
Two versions of a raised buckwheat batter, both built on an overnight ferment rather than chemical leavening. The hinge is timing: the batter must be mixed the night before and baked the moment it is slack, foamy and faintly sour.
- The yeast is not a packetA half teacup or four tablespoons means liquid yeast — homemade barm, or the reserved batter from the previous morning's cakes. About 1/2 teaspoon of instant dry yeast for the quantity in the first recipe gives a comparable overnight rise at room temperature; a full packet will blow the batter out and sour it hard by morning.
- Teacup and pintA teacup is smaller than a modern measuring cup; it is usually reckoned at about 3/4 cup, though the book does not define it. The pints are liquid pints, 2 cups. The first recipe's quart of buckwheat is by volume, somewhere around 15 to 17 oz by weight.
- "Sifted meal"In a Virginia book of this period, unqualified "meal" is cornmeal, sifted to remove the coarse bran. It lightens the buckwheat and adds a little sweetness; the first recipe uses wheat flour to the same end.
- The pinch of sodaAdded in the morning, not the night before: the recipe places it after the batter has risen and been thinned. Overnight fermentation makes the batter distinctly acidic, and the soda both neutralises the sharpness and gives a burst of lift on the griddle. Under 1/4 teaspoon for a quart of flour -- more and the cakes taste soapy and discolour.
- The cup of milk is doing real workThe note "to make them brown well" is accurate: buckwheat has little available sugar left after a long ferment, and milk sugars and proteins supply the browning. Skip it and the cakes come off pale and leathery.
- Griddle heat"Bake quickly" points to a hot griddle, in modern terms roughly 375-400F -- a drop of water should skitter, not sit. Buckwheat cakes set fast and dry out if held; the bubbles break across the whole surface before flipping, and the second side needs less than a minute.
- Batter consistencyAfter the overnight rise the batter should pour in a ribbon, thinner than a modern pancake batter. Thin with warm water or milk as needed in the morning; a stiff buckwheat batter bakes dense.
- YieldThe first recipe, about six cups of flour, makes roughly 30 to 36 cakes of four inches — enough for a large breakfast table. Halve it for four people.
- Keeping the batter goingThe old practice was to hold back a cup of risen batter in the crock as the starter for the next day, feeding it fresh flour, salt and water each night. It works, though the sourness deepens after the first week.
Buckwheat is not a wheat or even a grass but the seed of Fagopyrum esculentum, a fast-growing plant that tolerates thin, cold soil, which is why it took hold in the uplands of Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York rather than the plantation lowlands. Buckwheat batter was commonly raised with yeast, though soda, baking powder or beaten eggs served as well, and the overnight crock kept on the hearth or near the kitchen stove was a familiar sight in many nineteenth-century American kitchens, refreshed each evening and drawn down each morning through the cold months. That seasonality was real ufood food were winter food, tied to the autumn harvest and to appetites big enough for them. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives credited by initials "Mrs. D.B.K.", "Mrs. Dr. J." which is why the same dish appears twice here in two slightly different hands: the book prints what each contributor sent rather than reconciling them into one authoritative version.