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Common Pancakes
977. Make a light batter of three spoonfuls of flour, three eggs well beaten, and half a pint of milk, some of which, with the eggs, is to be mixed with the flour; to the other part, put three ounces of butter melted. Then mix altogether, and put into the frying-pan in a very thin layer. Fry with lard or dripping; but do not put any butter into the pan to fry them after the first frying, as they will give out enough afterwards to keep up the stock. Sugar and lemon should be served to eat with them. Or, when eggs are scarce, make the batter with flour, small beer, ginger, &c. Or, clean snow with flour and very little milk will serve, but not nearly as well as eggs.
A thin, crepe-style batter enriched with melted butter, from a period when the frying pan was seasoned by use rather than washed between batches. The instructions are sound; only the measures need translating.
- "Three spoonfuls of flour"Genuinely imprecise: period spoon measures were not standardised, and the intended weight cannot be pinned down from the text. Judge by consistency instead — the finished batter should be thin enough to run and coat the pan like single cream.
- Half a pintA British imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so half a pint is 10 fl oz, or about 1 1/4 US cups of milk.
- The two-stage mixingMilk and eggs go into the flour first to make a smooth paste; the melted butter is stirred into the remaining milk and added after, then everything is mixed together, exactly as the text directs. Resting the batter 20-30 minutes before frying is modern practice, not in the original.
- Three ounces of butterAbout 6 tablespoons, which is generous by modern crepe standards and is precisely why the pan stops needing extra fat. Melt it and let it cool slightly before combining, or it will begin to cook the egg.
- Grease only the first pancakeThe point of the note about lard or dripping is that the butter in the batter self-greases the pan thereafter; as the recipe says, they 'will give out enough afterwards to keep up the stock.' Extra fat for each subsequent round is unnecessary.
- Small beerA weak beer, well below the strength of ordinary ale, and now rare on sale. Any mild or low-alcohol beer stands in; its gas would supply some of the lift the eggs would otherwise have given.
- The snow versionClean fresh snow was a traditional stand-in for eggs, the air it carries supplying some lightness. The book's own verdict — "not nearly as well as eggs" — is fair, and modern snow near roads or roofs is not something to put in food.
- Pan and heatA well-seasoned or non-stick pan of 8-9 inches over medium-high heat; roughly a minute a side, until lace-brown at the edges.
- YieldAbout eight to ten thin pancakes, serving three or four. Serve with sugar and lemon, as the recipe directs.
Pancakes of this kind — thin, egg-rich, eaten hot with sugar and lemon — were a fixed part of the British domestic year, tied above all to Shrove Tuesday, when eggs, butter and milk were used up before the Lenten fast. What dates this particular entry is not the batter but the substitutions appended to it. Eggs were seasonal and dear in winter and early spring, at exactly the moment pancakes were most wanted, so cooks kept fallbacks: small beer with ginger, whose gas raised the batter, or fresh snow, folded in for the air it carried. Snow pancakes turn up in British household books of the period and are generally treated as a makeshift rather than a delicacy, which is how this compiler treats it too. Compilations of this kind drew on contributed and inherited receipts, which is one reason a single short entry can carry three versions of the same dish ranked frankly by quality.