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Buttermilk Cakes
1 quart of flour. 2 eggs, well beaten. 1.1/2 pint of buttermilk. 1 teaspoonful of salt.
Beat very light, after mixing the ingredients. Just before baking, stir in a little soda, mixed in a little of the buttermilk.
Bake on a griddle, free from grease.--Mrs. L.
A plain buttermilk griddle cake, measured by the quart in the old Virginia manner. The batter is quick to put together, but the soda has to go in last or the cakes fall flat.
- The hinge: soda at the very endDissolve the soda in a spoonful of the buttermilk and fold it in just before the first cake hits the griddle. The lift comes from soda meeting acid, and it begins immediately; batter left standing after that point bakes heavy.
- A quart of flourMeasured by volume, roughly 4 cups. Period cookbooks commonly reckoned a quart of flour at about a pound, though 4 cups of modern all-purpose flour weighs closer to 500 g. Nineteenth-century soft Southern wheat was lower in protein than modern all-purpose; a cup of cake or pastry flour swapped in for one of the four gets closer to the original crumb.
- A pint and a half of buttermilk3 cups. That makes a pourable batter rather than a thick one, so expect thin, wide cakes with lacy edges. Modern cultured buttermilk is thicker than the churn buttermilk of the 1870s; thin it with a little milk or water if the batter will not spread.
- "A little soda" is genuinely vagueFor 3 cups of buttermilk, 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda is the usual proportion. The original leaves it to the cook's judgment because buttermilk acidity varied from churn to churn; too much soda gives a soapy, faintly yellow cake.
- Griddle free from greaseA well-seasoned cast-iron griddle, or a soapstone one, would suit the instruction, wiped dry rather than oiled. On modern nonstick or seasoned iron this works as written; if the pan is bare steel, the barest film of fat wiped on with a cloth is closer to the intent than a greased pan.
- Heat and timingMedium heat, around 375F on an electric griddle. Two to three minutes on the first side, until the surface loses its gloss and the bubbles break, then about a minute on the second.
- "Beat very light"This predates the modern rule against overmixing, and with soft flour it did less harm. Beat the eggs and buttermilk thoroughly, then stir the flour in only until it is wetted.
- YieldAbout 20 to 24 cakes of four inches, enough for six people. There is no sugar in the batter, so it takes butter, molasses, or syrup at the table.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1877, drew on contributions credited to some 250 ladies of Virginia and neighbouring states, a number of them identified only by initials, as here. Buttermilk cakes of this kind belonged to a dairy economy in which butter was churned at home and the sour liquid left behind had to be used within a day or two. Its acidity made it a natural partner for saleratus and for the bicarbonate of soda that was widely available in American kitchens by mid-century.