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Sour Milk Griddle Cakes
Beat 2 eggs very light without separating, and add to them 2 cupfuls of thick sour milk, to which has been added 1 teaspoonful of soda dissolved in I spoonful of boiling water. Stir in quickly ½ of a teaspoonful of salt, 1 tablespoonful of molasses and 1 tablespoonful of melted butter. Beat hard for a moment and bake at once. Unless the milk is very sour and the chemical action of the soda on it marked by a thorough foaming, it is well to add ½ of a teaspoonful of baking-powder in order to overcome any tendency to heaviness.
A plain sour-milk pancake batter of the sort that appeared in every economical cookbook of the period. One large omission and one changed ingredient need attention before you start.
- The flour is missingAs printed, the recipe lists no flour — an omission of the original, not a stylistic choice, since a batter of eggs and sour milk alone will not make a griddle cake. Contemporary versions of the same formula use roughly 2 cups of flour to 2 cups of sour milk, beaten in to a batter that pours thickly from the spoon.
- Sour milk is not spoiled milkThe original means raw milk clabbered naturally to a thick, tart curd. Pasteurised milk left on the counter putrefies rather than souring cleanly and should not be used. Substitute an equal quantity of cultured buttermilk, which supplies the same acidity for the soda.
- Soda and the boiling waterOne teaspoonful of soda to 2 cups of buttermilk is about the usual modern proportion; if you are sensitive to a soapy note, three-quarters of a teaspoon will do. Dissolving it in a spoonful of boiling water simply prevents unmixed pockets of soda in the finished cakes.
- The insurance baking powderThe closing note is sound. Commercial buttermilk varies in acidity, and if the batter does not visibly foam when the soda goes in, half a teaspoon of baking powder will keep the cakes from coming out dense.
- "Bake" means griddleNineteenth-century usage: to bake a griddle cake is to cook it on the griddle. Medium heat, around 375F on an electric griddle, until bubbles break across the surface and the edges look set.
- Bake at onceThis is the hinge. The soda begins working the moment it meets the acid, and a batter left standing will lose part of its lift. Have the griddle hot before the soda goes in.
- The molassesA tablespoon gives colour and a faint darkness rather than sweetness, and it also browns the cakes faster — watch the first one closely to set your heat.
- YieldWith the flour restored, about sixteen four-inch cakes, or four servings.
Sour-milk cookery is the signature of a household that kept its own cow or bought raw milk daily: milk that had turned was not waste but a leavening ingredient, its lactic acid reacting with soda to raise breads, cakes and griddle cakes at almost no cost. It uses up something already in the house and stretches two eggs across a family breakfast. Chemical leavening sold under the name saleratus — first potassium bicarbonate, and only later the sodium bicarbonate we call baking soda — made this possible on a domestic scale, and commercial baking powder arrived later as the more reliable but more expensive alternative; the closing sentence here, offering powder only as a corrective when the milk is not sour enough, catches the two leavenings in the middle of that transition.