Rice Griddle Cakes

The ingredient list as printed is incomplete — the rice, eggs, flour and scalded milk called for in the method never appear in the column of quantities. Treat the amounts below as a reconstruction from comparable griddle-cake formulas of the period, and expect to adjust.

• The missing quantitiesThe method calls for rice, scalded milk, eggs and (by implication) flour, none of which are listed. Cakes of this type in contemporary books generally run to about 1 cup cooked rice, 1 cup scalded milk poured over it, 2 eggs and 1 to 1 1/2 cups flour, with the 1 cup cold milk given here added at the end. Nothing in the printed text confirms those figures.
• The overnight soak is the pointScalded milk poured over cooked rice and left overnight softens the grains until they break down into the batter rather than sitting in it as lumps. Skipping it gives gritty cakes. Refrigerate the soaking rice rather than leaving it on the counter as the original assumes.
• Baking powder goes in last-minute, not overnightAdd the 2 teaspoons baking powder with the flour just before cooking. If it is mixed into the rice at night it will be spent by morning.
• Order of mixingDry ingredients, then beaten eggs, then the cold milk. The cold milk is there to thin the batter to pouring consistency; hold a little back and add it by eye, since how much liquid the rice absorbed overnight varies.
• Griddle heatA well-greased griddle at moderate heat, medium on the stovetop; the book gives no temperature and only refers back to its Griddle Cakes. Rice batter is slow to set through the middle, so a griddle hot enough to brown ordinary batter fast can colour these before the centre is done.
• Cook them smallRice makes a heavy batter that is slow through the middle. Three-inch cakes turn cleanly; large ones tend to stay wet at the centre.
• YieldOn the quantities above, roughly sixteen to eighteen small cakes, or four servings.