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Corn Griddle Cakes
2 cups cornmeal 1 cup flour 1 teaspoon salt 4 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 1 tablespoon sugar 1 egg 2 cups milk 1 tablespoon melted butter Sift together thoroughly cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Beat the egg. Add to milk, and pour slowly on other ingredients. Mix thoroughly and add butter. Bake as for Bread Griddle Cakes.
A straightforward cornmeal batter from a baking-powder company's promotional cookbook. The only real puzzles are the branded leavener and the cross-reference to a recipe you may not have in front of you.
- Calumet baking powderCalumet was a double-acting powder made with alum (sodium aluminium sulphate) as well as phosphate, and the brand is still sold today. Any modern double-acting baking powder substitutes measure for measure; 4 level teaspoons for 3 cups of dry meal and flour is on the generous side but not out of line for a batter this heavy.
- CornmealUse fine or medium yellow cornmeal, not coarse polenta grind and not self-rising mix. Degerminated meal, which absorbs less liquid than stone-ground, was in circulation by this period, but the grind behind a recipe like this cannot be pinned down.
- Let the batter restThis is the hinge. Cornmeal hydrates slowly, and a batter cooked immediately will be gritty. Ten to fifteen minutes standing gives a tender cake; expect the batter to thicken as it sits and thin it with a splash of milk if it stops spreading.
- "Bake as for Bread Griddle Cakes"In these books "bake" on a griddle simply means cook. Grease a griddle lightly and hold it at medium, about 375F, and drop the batter in rounds; turn once when the surface is bubbled and the edges look set, roughly 2 to 3 minutes a side.
- Don't flip twiceWith two parts cornmeal to one of flour these cakes are low in gluten and lose their rise quickly. One turn only, and press them as little as possible.
- YieldAbout eighteen 4-inch cakes, enough for four to six people. The batter does not keep well overnight once leavened; cook it all and reheat the extras.
Reliable Recipes was published by the Calumet Baking Powder Company of Chicago, one of dozens of turn-of-the-century cookbooks written to sell a specific tin, which is why the brand name appears inside the ingredient list rather than a plain "baking powder." Calumet was an alum-phosphate powder that competed hard on price with the older cream-of-tartar brands, and the free or nearly free recipe booklet was one of its advertising vehicles alongside heavy advertising in periodicals. The recipe itself is older than the company: griddle cakes of cornmeal stretched with a little wheat flour were a standard American breakfast long before chemical leavening, raised variously with beaten egg or with saleratus. What the baking powder bought the cook was speed, since the earlier route to a light corn cake was an overnight yeast or sour-milk batter set the night before.