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Oatmeal Griddle Cakes
1 cake compressed yeast 2 cups milk, scalded and cooled 2 level tablespoons brown sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 1½ cups corn meal 1 cup sifted flour 2 eggs Dissolve the yeast and sugar (or molasses) in the lukewarm milk; add flour, eggs well beaten, corn meal, salt, and beat until smooth. Cover and set aside to rise in a warm place for abou one hour, or until light. Stir well and bake on a hot griddle. If prepared over night, use one fourth cake of yeast and an extra half teaspoon of salt. Cover and keep in a cool place.
A yeast-raised griddle batter rather than a baking-powder one, which means the leavening is a fermentation you have to plan around. Note also that the ingredient list is cornmeal throughout despite the title, and that the recipe has been filed under Frozen Desserts by mistake — loose-leaf books shuffled easily.
- Compressed yeastOne cake of compressed (fresh) yeast was commonly about 0.6 oz, roughly equivalent to one 1/4-oz packet of active dry or instant yeast, or about 2 1/4 teaspoons, though cake sizes varied. The overnight version's "one fourth cake" is therefore a little over 1/2 teaspoon of dry yeast.
- Scalded and cooled milkScalding is generally explained as deactivating something in raw milk that weakens gluten, and it also dealt with bacteria in unpasteurized milk. With pasteurized milk it is unnecessary; simply warm the milk to lukewarm, around 100–110F, since anything hotter will damage the yeast.
- Mixing order mattersDissolve the yeast in the warm milk with the sugar before the meal goes in. Cornmeal absorbs liquid slowly, so beating until smooth and then letting the batter stand does double duty: the meal hydrates while the yeast works.
- The riseOne hour in a warm place, 75–80F, should give a batter that looks foamy and domed and smells faintly sour. The overnight method with a quarter of the yeast and extra salt is a deliberate brake — both slow fermentation so the batter does not over-ferment and collapse by morning.
- Stir well before bakingThis is the hinge instruction. Deflating the risen batter gives an even pour and a tender cake; if you ladle straight from the puffed surface the first cakes will be airy and the last ones flat.
- Griddle heatThe recipe gives no temperature; "a hot griddle" in practice means somewhere around 350–375F — a drop of water should skitter, not vanish instantly. Cornmeal batters can brown quickly, so keep the heat toward the lower end.
- Molasses optionThe parenthetical "(or molasses)" substitutes for the brown sugar; use about 2 tablespoons. It will darken the cakes and they will scorch more readily.
- YieldThe batter makes roughly 16 to 18 cakes of 4 inches, enough for four people. It is thin by modern pancake standards and spreads on the griddle.
Yeast-raised griddle cakes were the older tradition; chemical leavening only displaced them gradually through the nineteenth century. The overnight variant, with less yeast and a cool place to stand, is a household ancestor of every make-ahead batter and shows a cook thinking about a breakfast that had to be on the table early.