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Fried Cakes (Eggs C sugar C sour milk T)
2 eggs 1 C sugar 2/3 C sour milk 2 T melted butter or lard Flour 1¼ t soda 1½ t cream tartar 1 t salt ½ t numeg Sift soda, cream tartar, salt and nutmeg with flour (about 4 cups).. Makes 2 dozen.
Mrs. E. H. Wells. 1 C sugar 1 t butter 2 eggs 1.C sweet milk
A plain sour-milk doughnut of the kind church cookbooks printed by the hundred, written for a cook who already knew what to do with the dough. The frying is left entirely to you.
- The abbreviationsC is a cup, T a tablespoon, t a teaspoon. "Numeg" is nutmeg, and freshly grated is worth the trouble in a dough this plain.
- Fractions that have gone astrayThe leavening and spice quantities have lost their fraction bars: "14 t soda" is 1/4 teaspoon, "12 t cream tartar" and "12 t numeg" half a teaspoon each. That is the usual one-part-soda-to-two-parts-cream-of-tartar ratio, though light for about 4 cups of flour; the sour milk supplies acid of its own, so if the cakes seem sluggish, increase both in proportion rather than singly.
- Sour milkThis means milk left to clabber, which modern pasteurised milk does not do reliably; it tends to spoil rather than sour cleanly. Use buttermilk, or stir a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice into a scant 2/3 cup of whole milk and let it stand ten minutes.
- Soda plus cream of tartarTogether these are simply homemade baking powder. Two teaspoons of commercial double-acting baking powder plus a pinch of soda to answer the acid milk does the same job.
- The missing instructionNo frying directions are given. Chill the dough until firm, roll about 3/8 inch thick, cut, and fry in fat at 365-375F, roughly a minute a side. Below 350F the cakes drink fat; above 385F they brown before the centre sets.
- Flour is a range, not a number"About 4 cups" is honest -- add enough for a soft dough that just holds a rolled shape. Every extra half cup makes a heavier, breadier cake.
- YieldTwo dozen. The recipe names no cutter size; working back from about 4 cups of flour, something in the region of 2 1/2 inches gives roughly that count. Roll and fry the scraps last; they toughen with each rerolling.
Sour-milk fried cakes belong to the dairy household, where milk that had turned was an ingredient rather than a loss, and soda with cream of tartar served where tinned baking powder was not to hand. A "fried cake" and a "doughnut" were often the same object, though some cooks reserved doughnut for the raised, yeast-leavened version and fried cake for the quick chemically leavened one printed here. Compiled community books ran contributed recipes over a signature -- here Mrs. E. H. Wells -- which may be why the frying step, obvious to the contributor, never made it onto the page.