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Buckwheat Cakes
Heat a pint of water, add half a pint of buckwheat flour and a teacupful of yeast, and let it stand for several hours to sponge. Then add a couple of spoonfuls of melted lard, the same quantity of syrup, a little salt, and mix thoroughly. Make into thin cakes and bake on a griddle.
A yeast-raised buckwheat batter of the old overnight type, written for cooks who kept a crock of leaven going all winter. The measurements are by volume in pints and cups, and one of them will not translate directly.
- The sponge is the whole recipeEverything depends on the fermentation before the fat and syrup go in. The recipe asks only for "several hours", which in practice is usually read as setting the sponge in the evening and cooking in the morning; the tang and the open, lacy texture come from that rest, not from the griddle.
- "A teacupful of yeast"This means liquid yeast — barm, or a homemade potato or hop ferment — not a packet of dry granules. There is no honest conversion. A cup of active sourdough starter or a well-fed poolish behaves closest; a scant teaspoon of instant yeast in the sponge will also raise it, but the flavour will be flatter.
- VolumesA pint of water is 2 cups; half a pint of buckwheat flour is 1 cup by volume, roughly 4 oz. A "spoonful" in a book of this date is usually taken to mean a tablespoon, which would give about 2 tablespoons each of melted lard and syrup, though the term is not a fixed measure.
- The batter is thin on purposeTwo cups of water to one cup of flour makes a pourable, crepe-like batter, and "thin cakes" confirms it. Buckwheat drinks liquid overnight, so judge consistency after the sponge has stood, not before.
- SyrupRead this as cane syrup, sorghum or molasses — dark, faintly bitter, and there to feed the yeast as much as to sweeten. Maple works and was used, but gives a milder, less characteristic cake.
- LardMelted lard gives the crisp edge these cakes are known for. Butter browns faster and burns at griddle heat; if you substitute, use clarified butter or a neutral oil.
- Griddle heatThe recipe gives no temperature; a moderately hot griddle, in the region of 350-375°F, greased lightly and wiped nearly dry. Buckwheat cakes set fast and want a single confident flip once the surface has gone matte and the bubbles hold open.
- If the sponge has gone sharpAn overnight ferment in a warm kitchen can turn sour. A pinch of baking soda stirred in just before cooking was a common correction in period books and also lightens the batter; add it at the last minute or the lift is wasted.
- YieldAbout a dozen thin cakes, or breakfast for three or four.
Buckwheat cakes were a winter breakfast across the northern United States through the nineteenth century, and Pennsylvania and upstate New York in particular ate them by the stack. Buckwheat is not a cereal at all but the seed of Fagopyrum esculentum, a fast-growing plant that tolerated poor northern soil and short seasons, which is much of why it ended up on so many farm tables. The overnight sponge here reflects a domestic habit rather than a chef's flourish: households kept a batter crock behind the stove all season, holding back a cupful each morning to raise the next day's cakes. That such a method was set down in a hotel volume, in the same company as terrapin and canvasback duck, says something about how firmly the griddle cake had planted itself in the American breakfast — a kitchen that fed New York's wealthy still needed to produce a farmhouse pancake on request.