Home › Griddle Cakes and Waffles › French Pancakes
French Pancakes
1 cup flour 2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 eggs 1 tablespoon sugar 2 cups milk 1/2 cup cream jam powdered sugar Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Add eggs which have been beaten with the sugar and to which milk and cream have been added. Batter should be very thin. Heat small frying pan in which a little butter has been melted. Pour in just sufficient batter to cover bottom of pan. Cook over hot fire. Turn and brown other side. Spread with jam or preserves and roll up. Sprinkle with a little powdered sugar and serve hot.
This batter can also be used for Swedish timbales.
This is a crêpe batter with baking powder in it, which is what tells you the book was published to sell Royal Baking Powder. The leavening is optional; everything else works as written.
- The hinge: keep the batter thinOne cup of flour to two and a half cups of liquid gives a batter close to heavy cream, and that is correct. If it thickens on standing, thin it with milk a spoonful at a time rather than pouring in less batter and getting a thick pancake.
- The baking powderTwo teaspoons is generous for a crêpe and will give a slightly puffed, tender pancake rather than a lacy French one. Measure it level, or leave it out entirely and rest the batter 30 minutes for a more conventional crêpe. Royal was a cream-of-tartar powder in this period, which begins working as soon as it is wet; a modern double-acting powder holds part of its lift back for the pan.
- "Hot fire"On a gas or electric hob this is medium-high — the pan should sizzle when the batter hits but not smoke. Expect roughly 45 to 60 seconds on the first side, until the edges dry and lift, then 20 to 30 seconds on the second.
- Pan and turningA 7 to 8 inch skillet, well seasoned or nonstick, suits the "small frying pan" the book calls for. Butter it lightly before the first pancake only; more butter after that makes them spotty and hard to turn. Lift and flip with a thin spatula and your fingers, not by tossing.
- YieldAbout twelve to fourteen pancakes from a 7-inch pan, serving four. Hold them stacked on a plate over a pan of hot water, or in a 200F oven, and fill just before serving so the jam does not soak through.
- Swedish timbalesThe note refers to a timbale iron — a metal form on a long handle, dipped in the batter and then into deep fat, which sets a thin cup for creamed fillings. The irons are still sold; the fat wants about 375F, and the iron must be preheated in the oil or the batter will not cling.
- Jam and sugarWarm the jam slightly so it spreads over a hot pancake without tearing it. Powdered sugar goes on after rolling, at the table, or it dissolves into a syrup.
The New Royal Cook Book was one of a long series of promotional cookbooks issued by the Royal Baking Powder Company, and its recipes are written to put the product into as many dishes as possible — including, here, a French crêpe batter that traditionally contains no leavening at all. The pancakes themselves are the standard Anglo-American reading of the French crêpe: thin, cooked in a small pan, spread with jam and rolled, a form that appears in English cookery books through the nineteenth century under names like "French pancakes" or "pancakes the French way." The passing reference to Swedish timbales places the recipe in its moment too: timbale irons were a fashionable piece of American kitchen equipment in the 1900s and 1910s, sold for making crisp fried batter cases to hold creamed chicken or oysters at luncheons.