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Graham Batter Cakes
1 pound of graham flour, not sifted. 1 pound of white flour. 1 quart of warm water. 1 cupful of yeast. 2 eggs. Salt. 2 ounces of syrup. 2 ounces of melted lard.
Set the batter as a sponge like other yeast-raised cakes, either over night or 6 hours before supper, and add the enriching ingredients an hour before baking.
And, anything for a change, sometimes your people take streaks, and the prevailing fashion is fo rice cakes.
A yeast-raised griddle batter, not an oven cake — "batter cakes" in American hotel cookery means pancakes cooked on a griddle. The recipe is written for a cook who already knows the sponge method, so the working details are left out.
- The hinge: sponge first, enrich laterFlours, water and yeast go together first and ferment 6 hours or overnight; the eggs, syrup and lard are stirred in only about an hour before cooking. Adding the fat and sugar at the start slows the yeast and costs you the sour, open texture that makes these worth the wait.
- Flour by weightA pound of white flour is roughly 3 1/2 cups; a pound of graham flour is slightly less by volume. Weigh if you can — the batter should pour thickly, like heavy cream, and a quart of water against two pounds of flour lands close to that.
- "1 cupful of yeast"This means liquid barm or a wet brewer's yeast, not modern dry yeast. About 1/2 teaspoon of instant dry yeast will raise this quantity over a long overnight sponge; 1 teaspoon for a 6-hour one. A full cup of modern yeast slurry would be wildly over-leavened.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour milled with the bran and germ left in, named for Sylvester Graham. Stone-ground whole wheat is the nearest thing; "not sifted" is the point, so do not use a fine-milled whole-wheat pastry flour.
- Syrup and lardTwo ounces of syrup is a scant 3 tablespoons if weighed by the ounce, nearer 1/4 cup if read as fluid ounces — golden syrup, cane syrup or molasses all suit the graham flavour. Two ounces of melted lard is about 1/4 cup; butter or a neutral oil works, though lard gives the crisper edge.
- Griddle heatMedium, lightly greased. The recipe says nothing about heat, so the first cake is your test.
- YieldTwo pounds of flour and a quart of water make a large amount — roughly 40 to 45 four-inch cakes. The batter keeps a day or two refrigerated and gets tangier; slack it with a little warm water before cooking.
- The last sentenceIt is garbled in the original printing — "the prevailing fashion is fo rice cakes" should read "for rice cakes." Whitehead is simply telling the hotel cook to vary the griddle offering when guests tire of graham.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian preacher and dietary reformer of the 1830s and 40s who argued that unsifted whole-meal bread was healthier and morally steadier than the fine white loaves of commercial bakers. By the time The American Pastry Cook appeared, Jessup Whitehead was writing not for reformers but for hotel and restaurant cooks, and graham had settled into the breakfast repertoire as one option on a griddle rotation that also ran to buckwheat, rice and cornmeal cakes. The yeast-raised batter set overnight is the older American method, predating the general use of baking powder; the aside about guests taking "streaks" is the voice of a working chef who has learned that variety on the supper card matters more than any one formula.