Pancakes, Richer
INGREDIENTS for 8 pancakes.-6 eggs, pint of cream, pint of milk, 1/4 lb. of loaf sugar, 1 glass of sherry, teaspoonful of grated nutmeg, flour. AVERAGE COST, 2s.
Ascertain that the eggs are extremely fresh, beat them well, strain and mix with them the cream, milk, pounded sugar, wine, nutmeg, and as much flour as will make the batter nearly as thick as that for ordinary pancakes. Make the frying-pan hot, wipe PAN KAIL. it with a clean cloth, put in a small piece of butter or lard, pour in sufficient batter to make a thin pancake, and fry it for about 5 minutes. Dish the pancakes, piled one above the other, strewing sifted sugar between them, and serve.
TIME. About 5 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time, but specially served on Shrove Tuesday.
A rich egg-and-cream batter of the sort Victorian households kept for Shrove Tuesday. Two things need attention before you start: the fraction marks lost from the liquid measures, and the frying time.
- The missing fractionsThe text as printed reads "pint of cream, pint of milk", with no fraction before either. Half a pint of each is the likeliest reading: two full imperial pints of dairy against six eggs would make far more batter than eight pancakes require. If you follow that reading, work with about 10 fl oz cream and 10 fl oz milk.
- Imperial pintsA British imperial pint is 20 fl oz, not the American 16. Half a pint is therefore a scant 1 1/4 US cups.
- Loaf sugarSugar was sold as a hard refined cone and broken or pounded down as needed, which is why the recipe says "pounded sugar". Ordinary caster or granulated sugar is the direct substitute; 1/4 lb is about 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons.
- Flour, unmeasuredNo quantity is given because the cook was expected to judge by eye. For 10 fl oz cream, 10 fl oz milk and six eggs, start at around 8 oz (about 1 3/4 cups) plain flour and let it down to the consistency of thin cream. Rest the batter 30 minutes so the flour hydrates.
- Five minutes is too longA thin pancake in a hot pan is done in about a minute on the first side and 30-45 seconds on the second. The five minutes may reflect the heavier pans and slower, less even heat of a coal range; at that length a batter this sugary will scorch before the centre sets.
- The glass of sherryA wine glass of the period is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though period sources vary and some make it larger. Use a dry or medium sherry — a cream sherry alongside a quarter pound of sugar makes the whole thing cloying.
- Heat and fatThe instruction to wipe the hot pan with a clean cloth presumably served to take off stale grease before the fresh butter went in. A well-seasoned pan or a nonstick one wants only the barest smear of butter, renewed every second or third pancake; the sugar in the batter browns fast.
- ServingEight pancakes, stacked with sifted sugar between the layers — enough for four as a pudding. Lemon is the traditional accompaniment even where the recipe does not say so.
Beeton gives several grades of pancake, and this is the top of the range: cream in place of most of the milk, six eggs, sherry and nutmeg, at an average cost of two shillings — a real sum in a book where a plain family pudding might be listed at sixpence. The Shrove Tuesday note explains the extravagance. Pancakes were the traditional way of using up eggs, butter and milk before the Lenten fast, and the day is still called Pancake Day in Britain; the custom is generally traced to the medieval church's rules on fats and dairy during Lent. The sherry-and-nutmeg flavouring is thoroughly Georgian in character and had been attached to sweet batters and puddings in English cookery books for well over a century before Beeton set it down. Loaf sugar, sold in hard cones and pounded in a mortar as needed, was the standard refined sugar of the mid-nineteenth-century kitchen; granulated sugar in a paper bag was only beginning to displace it.