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Corn Meal Griddle-Cakes
Two cups corn meal, one cup flour, onehalf teaspoon salt, one teaspoon molasses, two teaspoons baking powder, milk or milk and water to make a thin batter on a griddle.
A terse batter formula of the sort common in early-1900s bread chapters, where the cook was expected to judge consistency by eye. The proportions work, but two things are left unstated: the liquid quantity and the mixing method.
- Liquid quantity"Milk or milk and water to make a thin batter" is genuinely open. Expect roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups for the 3 cups of dry ingredients here; the batter should pour from the spoon in a ribbon, not drop in a lump.
- Corn mealPeriod "corn meal" was often a medium or coarse stone-ground white or yellow meal rather than the fine degerminated meal common now, and it takes up liquid more slowly. If your meal is fine, start at the low end of the liquid.
- Scald the meal, or let it restThis is the hinge. Cornmeal needs time to hydrate or the cakes taste gritty. Either pour a cup of boiling milk or water over the meal and let it stand until warm before adding the rest, or mix everything and rest the batter 15 to 20 minutes.
- Baking powder timingTwo teaspoons for 3 cups of dry mix is right, but a long rest costs you lift. If you plan to rest the batter, hold back the baking powder and stir it in just before cooking.
- The molassesOne teaspoon in three cups of dry mix is for a trace of colour and a faint sweetness, not for sweetening; at that quantity any effect on browning will be slight.
- Griddle heatMedium, around 375F on an electric griddle. Cornmeal cakes brown more slowly than wheat ones and need a full two to three minutes on the first side; turn when the edges look set and bubbles have broken across the surface.
- No egg, no fatThe batter has neither, so the cakes are lean and a little fragile. Grease the griddle lightly even if it is well seasoned, and keep the cakes small for easier turning.
- YieldAbout 16 to 18 cakes of three to four inches, enough for four people.
Cornmeal griddle-cakes belong to the long American habit of stretching wheat flour with maize, a practice older than the republic and still economically sensible in 1900, when cornmeal was generally cheaper than white flour. The one cup of wheat flour here is doing structural work: corn has no gluten, so a purely meal batter produces cakes that crumble. The teaspoon of molasses looks back to an earlier era of griddle cookery, when molasses was a common everyday sweetener and appeared in cornbreads, brown breads and pancakes as a matter of course rather than as a flavour choice.