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Ypsilanti Egg Rolls
Miss Norris.
Allow one egg for each person, two cups of milk for three eggs, four teaspoons of flour; beat whites and yolks separately, and add the eggs last. Put a very little of the mixture into a hot frying pan well greased with butter; roll as you would omelet, and put on a platter. Send in hot. For breakfast or tea, Can be eaten with sugar.
This is a crepe in all but name — a very thin egg batter cooked in a skillet and rolled. The proportions are unusually loose even for 1876, so read the ratio before you start.
- The ratio, decodedScaled from the given figures, three eggs take 2 cups milk and 4 teaspoons flour — a batter far thinner than a modern crepe, closer to a savory custard. If you want rolls that hold together, cut the milk to about 1 cup per three eggs and use 3 tablespoons flour.
- "Add the eggs last"The instruction only makes sense if you whisk the flour into the milk first, then fold in the separately beaten yolks and finally the whites. Folding the whites in at the end is the hinge: it gives the sheet enough body to lift and roll.
- Season itNo salt is specified, as is common in the period. A pinch per three eggs makes the difference between a pancake and something that tastes of raw flour.
- Pan and heatA well-buttered 8-inch skillet over medium heat. "A very little of the mixture" means enough to coat the base in a thin film — roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons, swirled immediately.
- TimingEach sheet takes under a minute a side. Roll while still hot and pliable; cooled sheets crack. Butter the pan again between rolls.
- Yield"One egg for each person" is the only guide to quantity the recipe gives; how many rolls that produces depends on how thinly each sheet is spread.
- ServingThe recipe offers sugar as an option, but jam, lemon, or a savory filling all work. Keep finished rolls on a warm platter, uncovered, so they do not steam soft.
The Home Cook Book (Chicago, 1876) was assembled from recipes contributed by named women and sold for charity, which is why so many dishes carry either a contributor's name or a town's — here apparently both, Miss Norris and Ypsilanti, Michigan. The dish itself is a plain rolled egg pancake. Its appearance under a place name rather than a descriptive one tells you something about how these community cookbooks worked, circulating as a record of who cooked what in which household rather than as a systematic manual. The suggestion that it serve "for breakfast or tea" places it in the lighter meals of the day.