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Rice Griddle-cakes II
1 cup milk 1 cup warm boiled rice 1/2 teaspoon salt Yolks 2 eggs Whites 2 eggs 1 tablespoon melted butter ⅞ cup flour Pour milk over rice and salt, add yolks of eggs beaten until thick and lemon color, butter, flour, and fold in whites of eggs beaten until stiff and dry.
A soft, custardy griddle-cake that leans on leftover rice rather than leavening. The batter is thinner than most pancake batters and the beaten whites are the only lift it gets.
- Fold, then cook at onceThere is no baking powder here — the egg whites are the entire leavening. Fold them in with a light hand and get the batter onto the griddle promptly, since a folded-white batter loses volume as it stands.
- Warm rice mattersFridge-cold rice stays in hard grains and will not soften into the batter. Warm the rice through with a splash of the milk first, or steam it briefly, so the grains swell and blend.
- Plain boiled rice onlyThe recipe calls simply for warm boiled rice, i.e. unseasoned rice boiled in water; it says nothing about seasoned or stock-cooked rice, which would carry flavours the recipe does not anticipate.
- Griddle heatModerate rather than hot: a drop of water should skitter, not vanish instantly. The recipe specifies no temperature, but an egg-rich batter like this will colour before it sets if the pan is too hot.
- Flour measureHalf a cup means a level cup measure of sifted flour by the book's convention, roughly 55–60 g. The batter should be loose enough to spread on its own; add a spoonful more flour only if the cakes will not hold an edge.
- TurningThese are more fragile than a wheat-flour pancake. Wait for the surface to look dry at the rim and set through the middle before flipping, and use a wide thin spatula.
- YieldRoughly two to two and a half cups of batter; the recipe gives no yield. Serve with butter and syrup, or with molasses.
Rice griddle-cakes belong to the large family of nineteenth-century breakfast cakes built on leftovers — cold rice, cold hominy, stale bread crumbs, boiled potato — stretched with a little flour and lifted with beaten eggs. Fannie Farmer's book gives several such variants, numbered rather than named, which is a fair sign of how routine they were. The technique of beating yolks "until thick and lemon color" and whites "until stiff and dry" is the standard Boston Cooking School vocabulary of the era, a set of visual cues taught at a time when American cookery writing was consciously turning from the handful and the pinch toward the level cup and the standardized spoon.