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Plain Indian Breakfast-Cake
1203. Mix over-night one quart of yellow sifted Indian meal, one handful of wheat-flour, and one spoonful of salt; pour on gradually one quart of warm water, and stir it so as to form a soft dough; cover the pan closely, and set it by till morning, when dissolve in one pint of warm milk and water a salt-spoonful of carbonate of soda, and with this mixture reduce the dough into a batter, stirring it very hard; cover, and place it before the fire for a quarter of an hour; have ready over the fire a frying-pan or griddle; grease it well with lard or fresh butter, and bake the cakes in the shape of small crumpets. When brown on one side, turn them with a knife. These cakes may be butter, and bake the cakes in the shape of small crumpets. When eaten with dripping, butter, or treacle.
An overnight cornmeal batter cooked on a griddle, closer to a soft crumpet than a cake. The only real technique is heat control: the batter is loose and needs a moderate griddle, not a hot one.
- Indian mealYellow cornmeal, medium or fine grind, not corn flour and not masa. Sifting is worth doing if the meal is coarse, since it swells overnight and coarse grit stays gritty.
- Quart, imperialA British quart is 40 fl oz, a little under five US cups; the water measure matches it, so the ratio holds either way if you use one measuring cup throughout. A pint here is 20 fl oz, and a salt-spoonful is about a quarter teaspoon.
- Carbonate of sodaPlain baking soda. It works because the overnight soak turns mildly acidic; if your batter smells sweet rather than faintly sour in the morning, expect very little lift.
- The overnight restLeave the covered pan at cool room temperature, not in a warm spot. Twelve hours is ample; much longer and the batter turns sharply sour.
- "Place it before the fire for a quarter of an hour"Simply somewhere warm so the soda begins working and the meal finishes hydrating. Fifteen minutes on the counter does the same job in a modern kitchen.
- Griddle heatMedium, around 350F on an electric griddle. A batter this wet browns before the centre sets if the pan is too hot, and the cakes are thick enough that they need three to four minutes a side.
- Turning themWait until the surface has lost its gloss and the edges look dry before flipping; a thin spatula does better than the knife the original calls for.
- TreacleBlack treacle or golden syrup; dark molasses is the nearest American substitute. Dripping means beef or bacon fat, which suits the corn flavour better than butter does.
- YieldThe quantities are large: a quart of meal with a quart of water and a pint of milk and water makes a big batch of small cakes. They are best straight off the griddle and go leathery once cooled.
"Indian meal" is the older British and American name for maize meal, a reminder that corn arrived in European kitchens as a New World import and kept the label for centuries. Recipes like this one appear in English cookery books of the mid-nineteenth century, alongside other cheap griddle breads for breakfast. The overnight soak is the practical part: coarse cornmeal will not soften in the few minutes a batter normally stands, and a long steep in warm water both hydrates the grain and may raise enough acidity for a pinch of soda to act on. The recipe's own serving suggestions -- dripping, butter, or treacle -- put the cakes at the plain end of the Victorian table.