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Beauregard Batter Cakes
Make a batter of one quart each of flour and sour milk, three eggs beaten separately, a table-spoon of butter, and two level teaspoons soda. Pulverize the soda very fine before measuring , then thoroughly mix with the flour. Add whites of eggs just before baking on the griddle. Sweet milk may be used (with the other ingredients in same quantity) with Horsford's Bread Preparation, one measure each of soda and acid, which must be thoroughly mixed with the flour. These may also be made without eggs.
A large, plain sour-milk pancake batter that leans on separated eggs for lift. The proportions are given by volume in quarts, which is the main thing to sort out before you start.
- Scale it down firstA quart of flour and a quart of sour milk is roughly 4 cups of each, yielding around 30 to 36 cakes. Halving or quartering the recipe is sensible for a modern household.
- Flour by weightA quart of flour is 4 cups. Period soft-wheat flour was lighter per cup than modern all-purpose, so weigh about 16 oz for the 4 cups rather than dipping the cup, or the batter will be stiff.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, not spoiled pasteurized milk. Use cultured buttermilk, or 4 cups whole milk with 4 tablespoons lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left 10 minutes.
- Why the soda is pulverizedNineteenth-century saleratus and soda came in lumps that would not dissolve and left bitter spots in the finished cake. Modern baking soda is already fine, but mix it thoroughly with the flour as instructed so it disperses evenly.
- Horsford's Bread PreparationAn early phosphate baking powder from the Rumford works, sold as a separate soda and a separate acid to be measured in equal parts, as the recipe directs. If using sweet milk, substitute about 4 teaspoons of modern double-acting baking powder for the 2 teaspoons soda and omit the acid entirely.
- The whitesFold the beaten whites in at the last moment and do not stir the batter down between batches. Much of the soda's reaction with the sour milk happens early, so the whites matter more by the time the second panful goes on.
- Griddle heatMedium: a drop of water should skitter rather than sit. Batters carrying free soda tend to brown quickly, so watch the first cake and adjust down if it colors before the center sets.
- Without eggsThe eggless version noted at the end will be flatter and more tender, closer to a slapjack. Thin the batter slightly and expect to turn the cakes more carefully.
The name is generally traced to P. G. T. Beauregard, the Louisiana-born Confederate general, whose name is often said to have been attached to dishes in Southern cookery after the war; a Beauregard label on eggs or batter cakes in a book like this one is regional homage as much as description. The Dixie Cook Book, compiled by Estelle Woods Wilcox and published in the 1880s, is full of such tributes alongside a strikingly commercial streak, and a brand name appears in the middle of the instructions. Horsford's Bread Preparation was the product of Eben Horsford's Rumford Chemical Works in Rhode Island, one of the first American chemical leavens sold to households, and it was marketed hard in cookbooks of exactly this vintage. Its presence here marks the moment when cooks were being offered a choice between the old method, souring milk and neutralizing it with soda, and the new one of buying the acid in a tin.