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Fried Cakes
One coffee-cup of not too thick sour cream, or one of sour milk and one table-spoon of butter, two eggs, a little nutmeg and salt, one tea-cup sugar, one small tea-spoon soda dissolved; mix soft. Mrs. S. Watson,
A contributed doughnut batter of the sour-milk-and-soda school, written for cooks who already knew what fried cakes should feel like. The flour is left to your judgment, which is the one thing you have to supply.
- No flour quantity is given"Mix soft" means adding flour until the dough is just stiff enough to roll and cut but still tacky — for this volume of liquid, expect somewhere in the region of 3 to 3 1/2 cups, added gradually. Stop as soon as the dough holds a shape; extra flour makes the cakes heavy and dry.
- Coffee-cup and tea-cupNineteenth-century American cookbooks were not consistent, but a coffee-cup is usually reckoned at about one cup (8 fl oz) and a tea-cup as smaller, in the region of 3/4 cup. On that reading this is about a cup of sour cream or sour milk and about 3/4 cup of sugar.
- Sour cream and sour milkBoth were the naturally soured products of unpasteurised dairy, acidic enough to react with soda. Modern cultured sour cream works directly; for the sour-milk version use buttermilk, since pasteurised milk left out spoils rather than souring cleanly.
- Soda dissolved"Dissolved" means stirred into a spoonful of warm water or into the sour milk before mixing, so it disperses evenly instead of leaving bitter yellow specks. One small teaspoon is the correct order of magnitude for a cup of acidic dairy.
- Frying, which the recipe omits entirelyFried cakes go into deep fat at 365-375F. Below that they absorb grease; above it the outside colours before the crumb sets. Roll about 1/3 inch thick, cut, and fry two to three minutes, turning once.
- NutmegGrate it fresh if you can. The quantity is left to the cook; a quarter to half a teaspoon suits this amount of batter.
- Rest the doughChilling the cut cakes for twenty minutes before frying helps them hold shape, a step these older recipes do not mention.
- YieldAbout 18 to 24 cakes from a 2 1/2-inch cutter. They are best the day they are made.
Fried cakes are the plain ancestor of the American doughnut, and this version belongs to the sour-milk-and-saleratus tradition that dominated home baking before commercial baking powder was cheap and reliable. Milk on the turn was, by most accounts, a common feature of farmhouse kitchens, and pairing its acid with a small measure of soda gave lift without yeast or long waiting — the same logic behind sour-milk biscuits, gingerbread and griddle cakes of the same decades. The Dixie Cook Book, like the other regional compilations of the 1880s, was assembled largely from recipes signed by contributing housewives, and the attribution to Mrs. S. Watson is typical: though the book had a named compiler, much of its authority came from named local cooks. It also explains the missing flour quantity and the missing frying instructions. To a cook who made fried cakes often, "mix soft" may well have been instruction enough.