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Wheat Griddle Cakes
1 cake compressed yeast 1 cup milk, scalded and cooled 1 cup lukewarm water 2 level tablespoons brown sugar 2 tablespoons melted lard 2 cups sifted flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 eggs Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the lukewarm liquid. Add lard (or butter), then flour gradually, the eggs well beaten, and salt. 2-L Beat thoroughly until batter is smooth; cover and set aside for about one hour, in a warm place free from draft, to rise. When 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. GRIDDLE CAKES No. 1 2 cups flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 3 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon sugar 1 or 2 eggs 2 tablespoons melted butter Milk (about 1½ cups) Mix and sift the dry ingredients; add the milk and beaten eggs; beat thoroughly; add melted butter and drop by spoonfuls on a hot griddle. Serve with butter and maple syrup.
GRIDDLE CAKES No. 2 2 cups flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons soda 2 eggs 2 tablespoons melted butter Sour milk (about 2 cups) Mix and bake as directed for Griddle Cakes No. 1. One egg may be used instead of two, but more beating will be necessary.
Three batters on one leaf: a yeast-raised overnight cake and two quick versions, one with baking powder and one with sour milk. The section heading ("Frozen Desserts") is a binding artifact of the loose-leaf format, not a clue to the dish.
- Compressed yeastOne cake of compressed yeast was roughly 0.6 oz of fresh cake yeast, equivalent to one packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry. The overnight variation's "one fourth cake" is about half a teaspoon of dry yeast, which is right for a slow cool rise.
- Griddle heatThe book gives no temperature; "hot griddle" is usually taken to mean somewhere around 350-375F. A drop of water should skitter and vanish rather than sit and steam. Cast iron needs a good five minutes to even out before the first cake goes on.
- Lard and greasingThe two tablespoons of melted lard can be butter or a neutral oil without changing the texture much. A well-seasoned griddle needs only a wipe of fat; the batters already carry enough.
- Sour milk in No. 2Period sour milk was raw milk clabbered at room temperature, not today's pasteurized milk, which spoils rather than sours cleanly. Use buttermilk, or milk soured with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice per cup.
- The soda is heavyTwo teaspoons of soda to two cups of flour is more than buttermilk's acid can neutralize; the leftover soda tastes soapy and turns the cakes yellowish-brown. One teaspoon, or a scant one and a quarter, is the modern proportion.
- Batter consistencyBoth quick batters want to pour thickly from the spoon and spread on their own. Milk quantities are given as approximations because flour absorbency varies; add the last quarter cup only if needed.
- Don't overbeat the quick cakesBoth quick recipes say to "beat thoroughly", and No. 2 calls for more beating still if only one egg is used. Modern practice with baking powder or soda is to mix only until the dry streaks disappear, since prolonged beating can toughen the cakes.
- Timing on the griddleTurn once, when the surface bubbles have broken and the edges look dry, roughly two to three minutes on the first side and about half that on the second.
- YieldEach of these makes about a dozen to sixteen four-inch cakes, enough for four people.
Yeast-raised griddle cakes are the older of the two methods here, and their survival into a loose-leaf book of this period is a small piece of evidence about how slowly breakfast cookery changed. Before chemical leavening became reliable and cheap, a batter set overnight with yeast or held back as a sourdough-style "stock" was one of the usual ways to get a light cake by morning; baking powder, commercially available from the mid-nineteenth century, made the No. 1 recipe possible and eventually pushed the yeast version to the margins. The sour-milk version with soda sits between them, using the acid of naturally clabbered milk, which was an everyday byproduct in a house that kept its own milk rather than buying it pasteurized. Loose-leaf cook books were sold as binders so that households could add, remove and reorder pages.