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Berlin Pancakes
Roll out dough slightly sweetened and shortened, as if for very plain doughnuts; cut in circles like biscuit, put a tea-spoon currant jam or jelly on the center of one, lay another upon it, press the edges tightly together with the fingers, and fry quickly in boiling
A jam-filled fried doughnut — the German Berliner — set down in shorthand for cooks who already knew how to make plain doughnuts. The text breaks off mid-sentence at "fry quickly in boiling," which in this book means boiling fat, not water.
- The seal is the whole recipePinched edges alone can open in hot fat and let the jam out. Brush a thin ring of water or egg white on the lower round, keep the filling well inside the border, and press from the center outward to expel trapped air before crimping.
- "Boiling" fat means 365-375FNineteenth-century books test fat by how fast a bread cube browns; use a thermometer instead. Below 360F the dough soaks; above 380F the outside colors before the seam sets.
- "Slightly sweetened and shortened"The recipe gives no proportions and does not say what raises the dough. A plain doughnut dough of the period might run something like 3 cups flour, 1/3 cup sugar, 2-3 tablespoons butter or lard, 1 egg, about 2/3 cup milk, and 2 teaspoons baking powder. The reference to "very plain doughnuts" points toward a quick chemically raised dough rather than the yeasted dough of a modern Berliner, though the text does not say so.
- Cut size"Circles like biscuit" probably means a cutter of about 2 to 2 1/2 inches. Two rounds sandwiched would give a finished doughnut around 3 inches across after frying; a batch on the scale suggested above would yield roughly 10 to 12.
- Jam, not jelly, holds betterA stiff currant or raspberry preserve stays put; loose jelly liquefies at frying temperature and finds any weak point in the seam. Chill the filled rounds 15 minutes before frying.
- Frying timeAbout 1 1/2 to 2 minutes a side for this thickness. Because there is no vent hole, cut the first one open to confirm the dough at the seam is cooked through.
- FinishingThe original stops short and does not say how these were finished; a roll in granulated sugar while still warm suits them.
Filled fried dough of this kind is generally traced to central Europe, where the Berliner Pfannkuchen was a Carnival food made from an enriched yeast dough, fried in lard and filled with plum or rose-hip jam. American cookbooks of the later nineteenth century absorbed the name — plausibly, though not demonstrably, through German immigrant kitchens — but rebuilt the thing on familiar lines: instead of a proofed yeast dough, a quick baking-powder doughnut batter, cut with a biscuit cutter and sandwiched around jam — a shortcut that gets the shape and the surprise center without the waiting. The Dixie Cook Book, compiled in the 1880s and substantially an adaptation of an earlier Northern compilation, routinely writes recipes as variations on a dish the reader is assumed to know, which is why this one begins by pointing back to "very plain doughnuts" rather than giving a proportion for anything.