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Bread Griddle Cakes
One pint of sweet milk; one and one-half pints of bread crumbs; two eggs; two teaspoons of baking powder; one teaspoon of salt; flour to thicken. If the crumbs are hard, soak them over night in the milk; if soft, they may be soaked for half an hour in the morning. When they are soft, turn them with the milk into a colander, and mash the bread through it. Add the beaten eggs, salt, powder and flour, and the batter is ready to fry. If an iron griddle is used to cook these cakes, it should be oiled a little more than usual. The cakes are very tender and should be turned carefully; and they require longer frying than any other kind.
A stale-bread pancake, thickened by feel rather than measure. The batter is fragile, so the handling matters more than the ingredient list.
- The hinge: don't rush the flipBread-crumb batter sets slowly and tears easily. Cook over medium rather than high heat, wait until the surface is fully dull and the edges dry, then turn once with a wide thin spatula. The recipe warns these need longer frying than any other kind, so expect several minutes a side.
- "Sweet milk"Simply fresh unsoured milk, as distinct from the buttermilk or clabbered milk also common in this period. Whole milk gives the best result; one pint is two cups.
- Bread crumbs, not packaged crumbsThis means torn or grated stale bread, soft and coarse, not dry commercial breadcrumbs. Use about 1 1/2 pints loosely packed torn crumb from a plain white loaf, crusts removed. Dried crumbs from a canister will drink the milk and give a pasty batter.
- "Flour to thicken"Genuinely ambiguous, and dependent on how much milk the bread absorbed. Start with 1/4 cup and add by the spoonful until the batter mounds slightly on the spoon but still spreads on the griddle; it should be thicker than a thin crepe batter and looser than muffin batter.
- Mashing through the colanderThis step exists to break up lumps of soaked bread, and it is worth doing. A few pulses in a food processor or a vigorous whisking achieves the same thing, but do not puree it to a paste; a little texture is worth keeping.
- Baking powder timingBaking powders of this period varied in composition and may not behave like a modern double-acting powder. Two teaspoons is fine, but stir it in last and cook the batter promptly rather than letting it stand.
- Griddle and fatThe instruction to oil more heavily than usual holds even on cast iron seasoned for years. A well-seasoned or nonstick surface plus a thin film of neutral oil or butter, renewed between batches, prevents the tearing this batter is prone to.
- YieldAbout twelve to fourteen 4-inch cakes, serving four. Serve with syrup, honey or stewed fruit.
Griddle cakes built on leftover bread belong to a long tradition of using up the stale end of a loaf, when bread was baked at home in quantity and throwing any of it away was unthinkable. The same impulse produced bread pudding, panades, fried bread and brown betty; the crumbs contribute softness and flavor that plain flour cannot, since the bread is already fermented and baked. The Butterick Cook Book appeared in 1911 from the publisher of Butterick dress patterns, part of a wave of household manuals aimed at middle-class women running kitchens with little or no hired help, where economy recipes like this one sat comfortably alongside company dishes. The note about oiling an iron griddle "a little more than usual" is a reminder that seasoning was maintained by hand rather than bought ready-made.