Velvet Cakes
1 quart of flour. 1 quart of milk. 1 tablespoonful of yeast. 1 tablespoonful of melted butter. 3 eggs.
Bake in muffin rings.--Mrs. A. C.
This is a yeast-raised batter, not a dough — closer to a crumpet than to a cupcake. The batter is thin enough to pour, and the muffin rings are what hold it together on a griddle.
- The hinge: this is an overnight batterThe hinge: this is a yeast batter that needs time -- a tablespoon of nineteenth-century homemade yeast or barm was weak and slow, and a batter like this would have had to stand for some hours; the recipe itself gives no timing. A workable modern reading: mix flour, milk, butter and about 1 teaspoon of active dry or instant yeast, cover, and let it ferment 8 to 12 hours at room temperature, adding the beaten eggs near the end -- though the original does not specify the order.
- Quart measuresA quart of flour is 4 cups, roughly 16 to 18 oz depending on how it is scooped. A quart of milk is also 4 cups, which gives a pourable batter about the consistency of heavy cream — that is correct, not an error.
- Yeast substitutionDo not use a full tablespoon of modern dry yeast. One teaspoon is ample for this quantity of flour over a long rise; a packet (2¼ tsp) will work if you want it risen in three or four hours.
- Salt is missingNo salt is listed. Add about 1½ teaspoons with the flour, or the cakes taste flat.
- Muffin ringsThese are plain metal rings, about 3 to 3½ inches across, set on a greased griddle or heavy skillet — the same tools used for English muffins and crumpets. Egg rings or cleaned tuna cans with both ends removed do the same job.
- "Bake" means griddle"Bake" here means cook on a griddle: the muffin rings are set on a greased griddle or heavy skillet, not in an oven. Grease the rings and the griddle, set it over medium heat, pour in batter to half the depth of the ring, and cook 6 to 8 minutes until the top is set and holey, then lift the ring and turn the cake to brown the second side.
- YieldRoughly two dozen cakes of 3 inches, depending on how deep the rings are filled. They are best eaten hot with butter; leftovers split and toast well the next day.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housekeepers — hence the initialled attributions like "Mrs. A. C." — is thick with yeast-raised griddle and batter breads of exactly this kind: waffles, batter cakes, muffins and rolls all leavened with a spoonful of homemade yeast kept alive in the kitchen. The name "velvet" is often taken to be a period compliment to texture rather than a place or a person, though the origin is uncertain. Recipes like this were on their way out even as the book appeared: chemical leavening, sold as saleratus and then as baking powder, was replacing the overnight rise in American kitchens through the 1870s and 1880s, and it is the reason so few cooks today think of a muffin ring as a griddle tool at all.