Home › Laboratory Exercises › Laboratory Exercises (Griddle Cakes C flour t salt t)
Laboratory Exercises (Griddle Cakes C flour t salt t)
Griddle Cakes. 1 C. flour t. salt 2 t. baking powder 1 C. milk 1 egg 1 T. melted butter 1. Mix and sift dry materials. 2. Add the beaten egg to half the milk and stir into the dry materials. 3. Add enough more milk to make a pour batter. Stir in the melted butter and beat well. 4. Heat a griddle hissing hot, grease with a piece of fat, salt pork, and pour the batter onto the griddle by spoonfuls. Bake until the under side is brown and bubbles begin to form on top, then turn and brown the other side. Be sure the cake is well browned on the under side before it is turned. Do not turn it a second time or it will not be as light.
Note. If large bubbles rise at once to the top of the cakes, the griddle is too hot, if the top stiffens before the under side is brown the griddle is not hot enough.
Serve the griddle cakes as soon as baked. They may be served with butter, with butter and syrup or with butter and sugar. They are sometimes baked in large cakes and spread with butter and then with granulated sugar or crushed maple sugar. As soon as the second one is baked it is placed on the first and spread with butter and sugar. This is continued until there is a pile of eight or ten. They are then cut in sections as you would a layer cake. This makes a nice Sunday night supper in the winter. Plain Muffins. 2 C. flour t. salt 3 t. baking powder 4 T. sugar 1 C. (?) milk 1 egg 2 T. melted butter. 1. Mix and sift dry materials three times. 2. Add half of the milk to the beaten egg and stir into the dry materials. 3. Beat well and if too thick, add enough more milk to make a soft drop batter.
A school-laboratory formula, written in the abbreviated style of a domestic-science notebook: C. is cup, T. tablespoon, t. teaspoon. Fractions have dropped out of the text in several places, so a couple of quantities need judgment.
- The missing fractionsBoth recipes read "t. salt" with no number, and the muffins give "1 C. (?) milk". Read the salt as 1/2 teaspoon in each, and start the muffins at about 3/4 cup milk, adding more to reach a soft drop batter as step 3 directs.
- Baking powder strengthTwo teaspoons to one cup of flour is heavier than modern practice, which runs about 1 to 1 1/4 teaspoons per cup. Household powders of this period were commonly single-acting tartrate or phosphate types rather than the double-acting powders sold now; with a current powder you can cut the quantity back somewhat without losing lift.
- "Bake" means griddle-cookThe book uses "bake" for the griddle work itself; nothing goes in the oven for the pancakes.
- Griddle temperature"Hissing hot" is roughly 375F on an electric griddle, or a heavy skillet over medium heat. The note in the original is the best test there is: large bubbles rushing up at once means too hot, a top that sets before the underside colours means too cool.
- Greasing with salt porkA scrap of fat salt pork rubbed over the surface, as directed here, leaves a faint savoury note. Neutral oil wiped on with paper towel does the same job; butter alone will burn at this heat.
- Turn once onlyThe instruction not to turn a second time is the hinge; the original gives lightness as the reason. One turn, and no pressing with the spatula.
- The stacked versionEight or ten large cakes layered with butter and granulated or crushed maple sugar, then cut in wedges, is essentially a pancake torte. Build it on a warmed plate and cut it while the butter is still soft.
- Muffins, unfinishedThe muffin entry breaks off before baking. Standard practice for a batter of this kind is greased tins in a hot oven, 400 to 425F, for 20 to 25 minutes; the sifting three times is there to distribute the baking powder, and a modern whisk through the dry ingredients does it in one pass.
- YieldOne cup of flour gives roughly ten to twelve small griddle cakes, enough for two. The muffin batter fills about a dozen standard cups.
This comes from a student manual, and the phrasing shows it: numbered steps, level measurements in cups and spoons, and a note explaining how to read the griddle rather than simply telling the cook to get it right. That style descends from the cooking-school movement of the late nineteenth century, which recast household cookery as a laboratory subject with standardised measures and repeatable results, and which put domestic science into American public schools and normal colleges. Griddle cakes themselves are much older than the method — batter cakes cooked on a hot iron plate over a fire predate chemical leavening entirely, and were raised with yeast, sour milk and soda, or simply beaten eggs. What baking powder changed was the timing: a batter that once needed hours could be mixed and cooked in ten minutes, which is exactly what a classroom period allows. The stacked and sugared pancake described here, cut in wedges like a layer cake, is offered in the recipe as a nice Sunday night supper in winter.