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Flannel Cakes
One tablespoon of butter; one pint of flour; one teaspoon of salt; two eggs; two cups of milk; two teaspoons of baking powder. Rub the butter into the flour, and add the salt. Beat the yolks of the eggs light, add the milk to them and when well beaten stir the milk into the flour until quite smooth. Beat the whites light, add them and lastly the baking powder, and bake on a hot griddle.
A plain baking-powder batter cake, thin and soft, from the era when griddle cakes were breakfast rather than brunch. Two details in the method are worth adjusting.
- A pint of flourDry goods were measured by volume in the same cups and pints as liquids, so a pint of flour is 2 cups, roughly 8 to 9 oz. The batter should be thin enough to spread on its own, closer to heavy cream than to a modern thick pancake batter.
- Baking powder lastStirring the powder into finished batter, as written, risks uneven pockets of leavening. Whisk it into the flour with the salt at the start; the rise will be the same and the crumb more even.
- Folding the whitesThe separated whites are what make these cakes light. Fold them in with a spatula in two additions rather than beating them through, and cook the batter within about 15 minutes before the foam collapses.
- Rubbing in the butterOne tablespoon rubbed into flour is a pastry technique that does little in a pour batter. Melting the butter and adding it with the milk and yolks is simpler and distributes the fat better.
- Griddle heat"A hot griddle" is not specified in the original; roughly 350-375F works, hot enough that a drop of water skitters but does not vanish instantly. Grease lightly between batches; too much fat fries the edges into lace.
- Cooking timeAbout 2 minutes on the first side, until the surface loses its shine and the bubbles at the rim stay open, then a minute on the second. Thin cakes overcook quickly and turn leathery.
- YieldAbout sixteen 4-inch cakes, serving four. Serve as they come off the griddle with butter and syrup or molasses; stacking them in a warm oven steams the surface soft.
"Flannel cakes" are generally said to take their name from the cloth: soft, napped, slightly spongy, the opposite of a firm buckwheat cake. Nineteenth-century versions were often raised overnight with yeast or hop barm, though soda and baking-powder versions are also well attested, and the name survives on American diner menus long after the yeast disappeared. This one belongs to the later phase, when chemical baking powder made a light griddle cake an ordinary weekday possibility rather than something set to rise before bed, and the beaten whites carry the lift the yeast used to.