No. 3074

German Pancakes

Crepes a l'Allemande

Put in a bowl six ounces of flour, eight egg-yolks, two tablespoonfuls of sugar and four tablespoonfuls of melted butter; stir the whole to obtain a smooth preparation. Dilute this with a gill and three-quarters of double cream, and add five beaten-up egg-whites and four tablespoonfuls of whipped cream. Butter lightly with clarified butter the bottom of two medium pans; heat and pour into each a thin layer of the batter, spreading it over the entire surface, and push them into a hot oven; when half done turn them over to have them cooked evenly on both sides. As soon as they are finished drain them on a cloth, bestrew with sugar and dress on a dish.

← No. 3073 Pancakes a la Rossini—Meringued Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3075 Pancakes of Peach Marmalade Macedoine →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's crêpes à l'Allemande are a rich, half-soufflé batter cooked in pans in the oven rather than on the range, which is the detail most likely to trip up a modern cook. A few conversions and one warning about the flip.

The gillTaking the gill as the American half-cup, "a gill and three-quarters of double cream" is about 7/8 cup — 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons. (An imperial gill of 5 fl oz would give closer to 1 cup.) Double cream can be read as heavy or whipping cream; the higher the fat, the closer to the original.
Egg count is not a typoEight yolks against five whites is deliberate. The extra yolks carry the richness and the whites, plus the four tablespoons of whipped cream, do the lifting. Do not balance them out.
"A hot oven"The book gives no figure; a hot oven in period usage is generally taken as somewhere around 425–450°F. These are thin sheets of batter and want to set fast.
The pans"Two medium pans" means two shallow ovenproof skillets or sauté pans, preheated with clarified butter before the batter goes in. Anything with a plastic or glued handle is out. Clarified butter is used because whole butter will blacken at this heat.
The flipThis is the hinge. A batter lightened with whites and whipped cream is fragile when half set; slide a wide offset spatula fully under the sheet and turn it in one motion, or turn it out onto a buttered plate and invert it back into the pan. Expect a few minutes on the first side and rather less on the second.
Fold gentlyMake the flour, yolk, sugar and butter base smooth first, then the cream, then fold in the beaten whites and the whipped cream last with a light hand. Overworking at that stage costs you the puff the oven is meant to give.
FinishingDrain on a cloth, dust with granulated or caster sugar and serve at once — these deflate as they cool, and reheating does not bring them back.
YieldThe quantities give roughly six to eight pancakes in a 9–10 inch pan, enough for four to six as a dessert course.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) is the working repertoire of Delmonico's in New York, and it catalogues pancakes the way it catalogues sauces: dozens of numbered variations, each differing by a fat, a flavouring or a garnish. The "German" label in this tradition generally signals the enriched, egg-heavy, oven-finished style associated with Austrian and southern German pastry cooking — the same family of thought that produces Salzburger Nockerl and the shredded Kaiserschmarrn — as against the thin, stovetop French crêpe that the recipe's own French title claims. The dry heat of the oven suited a batter loaded with whipped cream and whites, which behaves more like a soufflé than a crêpe. The entry sits in a run of hot entremets, the sweet course served between the roast and the dessert proper in a formal nineteenth-century menu.