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Rice Pancakes
Set a pint of new milk over the fire and when scalding hot stir in two spoonfuls of ground rice mixed smooth in onequarter of a pint of cold milk. Let it thicken, but not boil. Cool it, adding gently one-quarter of a pound of butter.
When cold add white sugar, a little nutmeg, four eggs well beaten, and a little salt. Use as little lard as possible in frying these pancakes and make them light brown. Sift sugar over them, roll them to a round shape and serve slices of lemon with them.
This is an English-style rolled pancake in the crepe family, not an American stack: the batter is a cooked rice-flour custard loosened with eggs, with no flour and no leavening. Several quantities are left to the cook, so a few decisions have to be made before you start.
- Do not let the milk boilThe starch is set by scalding milk (about 180F) and gentle thickening. Bringing it to a boil, or adding the eggs while it is still hot, curdles the mixture and gives you sweet scrambled egg rather than batter.
- MeasuresA pint is 2 cups; the quarter pint of cold milk for slaking is half a cup. A quarter pound of butter is one stick, 4 oz or 113 g — generous, and it is what makes these rich enough to fry with almost no added fat.
- "Two spoonfuls" is ambiguousRead against the liquid, this almost certainly means two tablespoons of ground rice, though period "spoonfuls" can mean anything from a teaspoon to a serving spoon. Two tablespoons gives a pourable batter; more gives something closer to a pudding.
- Ground riceFinely ground rice; modern rice flour is the closest available substitute, though period ground rice was often a slightly coarser grind. It is not the same as glutinous or sweet rice flour, which behaves quite differently. Slaking it in cold milk first, as directed, is what prevents lumps.
- Sugar and nutmegNo amount is given. Two to three tablespoons of sugar suits the quantity, and nutmeg should be grated fresh, a few rasps only — pre-ground nutmeg in the jar is flat by comparison.
- Frying fatLard is called for sparingly; clarified butter or a neutral oil wiped on with paper works as well. The batter is already a quarter-pound of butter to a pint of milk, so a greased rather than a filmed pan is what you want. Medium heat, light brown, not dark.
- Beating the eggsFour well-beaten eggs are the only lift in the recipe. Beat them until pale and frothy and fold them into the cold rice base rather than stirring them flat, or the pancakes will be dense.
- Yield and servingExpect roughly ten to twelve thin pancakes from a 8–9 inch pan. They are dusted with sugar, rolled, and served hot with lemon wedges to squeeze over — the acid is not optional garnish, it cuts the butter and nutmeg.
Rice flour turns up constantly in Anglo-American baking of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, valued both as an economy against wheat and as a genteel, delicate thickener for puddings, cakes and blancmanges; a cooked rice-and-milk base loosened with eggs is essentially a thin rice pudding taught to behave like a batter. The finishing here sugar sifted over, the pancake rolled, lemon served alongside is straightforwardly English, a treatment often associated with Shrove Tuesday pancakes and best documented as the standard English finish from the nineteenth century onward.