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Sour Milk Griddle Cakes
2 cups flour 1 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon soda 2 cups sour milk 2 eggs Mix in order given, beat well. Heat a griddle when hissing hot, grease with piece of salt pork on end of fork. Drop a tablespoon of batter from tip end of spoon on hot griddle. When full of bubbles, turn; when cooked on both sides, serve on hot plate.
If sour milk is very rich, the eggs may be omitted.
A plain soda-raised griddle cake that depends entirely on the acid in the milk. The proportions are sound; only the dairy needs rethinking.
- Sour milk means buttermilk nowPasteurized milk left to sour does not clabber cleanly the way raw milk did; it putrefies. Use cultured buttermilk cup for cup, or 2 cups milk with 2 tablespoons lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left 10 minutes.
- The soda is the hingeOne teaspoon of soda to 2 cups of acidic milk is a balanced pairing. If you substitute sweet milk, the cakes will taste soapy and metallic and will not rise. Nothing else in the recipe leavens them.
- Cook the batter promptlyThe reaction between soda and acid begins the moment they meet and is largely spent within about 15 minutes. Have the griddle hot before you mix, and do not rest the batter.
- Griddle heat"Hissing hot" is hot enough that a flick of water skitters rather than sits; modern griddle guidance for pancakes usually falls somewhere around 375F. Too cool and the cakes turn pale and tough.
- Greasing with salt porkA cut face of salt pork on a fork wipes the griddle with a thin film and a trace of salt. A folded paper towel dipped in bacon fat, butter or neutral oil does the same job.
- A tablespoon is smallThe original makes silver-dollar cakes. Use a quarter-cup measure if you want the modern breakfast size, and expect the second side to cook faster than the first.
- Omitting the eggs"Very rich" sour milk most likely meant milk that had not been fully skimmed. Full-fat buttermilk will hold together eggless, but the cakes come out flatter and more tender; keep the eggs for structure.
- YieldRoughly four cups of batter: something over fifty of the small tablespoon cakes, or about sixteen to eighteen at four inches. Serves four to six.
Sour milk was a daily fact in kitchens that kept their own cow or bought unpasteurized milk: it turned reliably, and it turned useful, since the lactic acid it developed was the standard partner for baking soda before commercial baking powder became cheap and universal. Recipes like this one are the practical residue of that arrangement, and they persisted in printed cookbooks well after the milk supply changed. Lowney's Cook Book, published by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston as a promotional volume for its chocolate and cocoa, was compiled by Maria Willett Howard and carries a full complement of ordinary household recipes alongside the confectionery the firm was actually selling. The griddle greased with salt pork on a fork is the older detail here, a habit from wood-stove cooking.