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Sour Milk Griddle-cakes
2½ cups flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 egg 2 cups sour milk 1¼ teaspoons soda Mix and sift flour, salt, and soda; add sour milk, and egg well beaten. Drop by spoonfuls on a greased hot griddle; cook on one side. When puffed, full of bubbles, and cooked on edges, turn, and cook other side. Serve with butter and maple syrup.
A plain sour-milk pancake batter that leans entirely on the acid-and-soda reaction for lift, so it is mixed and cooked at once rather than rested.
- Sour milkThis means naturally clabbered raw milk, tart but not spoiled, which pasteurized milk will not reliably become. Use cultured buttermilk cup for cup, or 2 cups milk with 2 tablespoons lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left 10 minutes.
- The soda quantityThe printed figure for soda has lost its fraction; for 2 cups of sour milk and 2½ cups flour, roughly 1¼ teaspoons is the working amount. Too much and the cakes taste soapy and turn yellow-brown at the edges.
- Sift, don't stir inThe soda goes through the sieve with the flour and salt, as the recipe directs. Added loose it is harder to distribute and can leave bitter pockets.
- Cook immediatelyGas begins forming the moment acid meets soda and much of the lift is lost if the batter stands. Have the griddle hot before the liquid goes in, and do not hold the batter in the refrigerator.
- Griddle heatThe recipe says only "hot." On a modern electric griddle medium-high is about right. Grease lightly and wipe out excess, or the first cakes will be spotted and greasy.
- The turning cueThe instruction to wait for puffing, bubbles across the surface, and set edges is the whole technique. Turn once only; pressing down after the flip drives out the lift you just created.
- ConsistencyThe batter is dropped by spoonfuls, so it should be thick enough to mound rather than pour. Thin it with a little more sour milk only if it is too stiff to drop from the spoon.
- YieldAbout sixteen to eighteen 4-inch cakes, enough for four people at breakfast.
Sour-milk cakes belong to the era before every household bought milk sweet and cold. Milk left in a crock turned acid on its own, and cooks treated that acidity as a leavening ingredient rather than a loss, pairing it with saleratus or soda to raise breads, gingerbreads and griddle-cakes. Sour-milk and sweet-milk versions of griddle-cakes, the latter raised with baking powder, were commonly printed together in cookbooks of the period. The maple syrup finish reflects New England habit.