No. 3274

Indian Cakes

Galettes Indiennes

Have in a vessel six ounces of wheat flour and four ounces of corn flour sifted together; add one ounce of powdered sugar, a pinch of salt and one gill of milk. Mix well in order to obtain a smooth running paste, then pour in an ounce and a half of melted butter. Just when ready to cook the cakes add to the mixture a teaspoonful of baking powder, already mingled with a teaspoonful of flour, and finish exactly the same as for the buckwheat cakes (No. 3272). When cooked dish and set a cover on top, serving them immediately.

← No. 3273 Flannel Cakes Breakfast Cakes No. 3275 Rice Cakes →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cornmeal griddle cake from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen where the cook already knows the buckwheat cake method it points to.

Weights in cupsSix ounces of wheat flour is about 1 1/3 cups; four ounces of corn flour is roughly 3/4 cup. One ounce of powdered sugar is about 2 tablespoons, and an ounce and a half of melted butter is 3 tablespoons.
A gillA gill is half a cup. That is the figure as printed, and it is far too little liquid for ten ounces of flour to make the "smooth running paste" the recipe demands — expect to need something closer to a cup and a half to two cups of milk, added gradually until the batter pours in a ribbon.
Corn flour is not cornstarchIn this book corn flour means finely ground cornmeal, the same thing older American cookbooks call Indian meal. Cornstarch will give you a slick, gluey batter. Use fine yellow or white cornmeal.
Soak the mealCornmeal absorbs liquid slowly. Mixing the batter and letting it stand twenty minutes before the baking powder goes in softens the grit; the original assumes a finer meal than most modern packets.
Baking powder at the last momentThe instruction to hold the baking powder back until you are ready to cook, and to premix it with a teaspoon of flour, is the hinge. Turn-of-the-century powders lost their lift quickly in a wet batter; the flour keeps the powder loose so it disperses evenly instead of clumping.
The missing cross-reference"Finish exactly the same as for the buckwheat cakes" means cooking small rounds on a greased, moderately hot griddle, turning once when the surface has set and bubbled.
Why the coverDishing the cakes and setting a cover on top traps steam and keeps them pliable for the short walk to the table. It also means they should be eaten at once; held longer they go damp.
YieldThe original gives no yield; ten ounces of flour will make a dozen or more small cakes, enough for three or four at breakfast.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's kitchen, which is why an American griddle cake appears here under a French name: galettes indiennes. "Indian" in nineteenth-century American cookery meant maize — Indian meal, Indian pudding, Indian bread — a usage that goes back to the colonial habit of calling the native grain Indian corn to distinguish it from English corn, meaning wheat. Cornmeal griddle cakes were among the oldest and plainest of American breakfasts, and Ranhofer's version is a refined one: half wheat flour to lighten the crumb, sugar and butter to enrich it, and baking powder in place of the yeast or sour milk and saleratus that earlier households relied on. The chemical leaven itself marks the date; commercial baking powders became reliable and widely available in American kitchens over the second half of the century, and by the 1890s a chef could assume a tin of it on the shelf.