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Crisp Swiss Pancakes or Crostri
Place in a saucepan one and a half gills good, rich milk, one and a half ounces lump sugar, four ounces good butter, a saltspoon salt and teaspoon vanilla essence. Place pan on fire, thoroughly heat without boiling and transfer to a China basin. Beat up two eggs in a bowl, add to milk, stir well with spatula, then mix in little by little one and a half pounds sifted flour and two saltspoons baking powder, briskly and continually stirring while adding. Place paste on a well-cleaned board, sharply knead for ten minutes, replace in bowl and let stand for thirty-five minutes. Divide batter into eighteen equal parts, give ball-shaped forms, with a pastry roller, roll out as thin and round as possible on a lightly floured table and let stand for fifteen minutes more.
Place in a large frying pan one pound leaf lard, four ounces butter, and when butter is thoroughly hot place in one beside another as many cakes as pan can hold and fry to a nice golden colour. Lift up with a skimmer, place on a cloth to thoroughly drain, prepare balance in exactly same way, sprinkle a little powdered sugar over and serve.
N.B. These excellent crostri will keep in perfect condition for several days. Place what is left over in a tin and keep in moderate temperature.
A stiff fried dough rolled paper-thin, closer to Italian carnival crostoli than to any pancake in the American sense. The hinge is the rolling: thin enough to see the board through, or the centres stay doughy.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is 4 fl oz by American reckoning (5 fl oz imperial), so one and a half gills is about 3/4 cup of milk, a little more if the compiler was working in imperial measure. A saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon. The 1 1/2 ounces of lump sugar is about 3 tablespoons; ordinary granulated sugar does the same work once it dissolves in the warm milk.
- The flour figure is out of proportionThe flour figure makes a very stiff dough -- A pound and a half is roughly 5 1/2 cups, which is a great deal against 3/4 cup of milk, two eggs and 4 ounces of butter. Doughs of this type are meant to be firm enough to roll paper-thin, so work the flour in gradually and stop when the dough is firm, smooth and kneadable rather than dry and crumbly, keeping the remainder for the board.
- Warm, not boiledThe milk, sugar and butter are heated only to melt the butter. If it goes near boiling, let it cool to lukewarm before the eggs go in or they will scramble in the pan.
- Kneading and restingTen minutes of brisk kneading develops the gluten so the dough can be rolled thin without tearing; the 35-minute rest lets it relax so it stops springing back. The second 15-minute rest after rolling matters too — rolled dough that goes straight into fat shrinks and blisters unevenly.
- The frying fatA pound of leaf lard plus 4 ounces of butter is a shallow fry, not a deep one. Butter alone will darken before the cakes colour; if you use all butter, clarify it. Any neutral frying fat or shortening substitutes for the leaf lard. The recipe asks only that the fat be "thoroughly hot": a scrap of dough should sizzle and rise at once.
- Frying timeAt that temperature each thin round takes well under a minute a side. "A nice golden colour" comes fast; pull them the moment they blister and colour, since they crisp further as they drain.
- Yield and servingEighteen cakes, rolled small enough that several sit side by side in the pan. Dust with powdered sugar only after they have drained and cooled slightly, or it dissolves into the fat.
- KeepingThe note is sound: rolled this thin and fried through, they keep several days in a tin at moderate room temperature. Do not cover them tightly while warm or the steam will soften them.
"Crostri" is almost certainly the compiler's spelling of crostoli, the thin fried pastry strips of northeastern Italy, known elsewhere as chiacchiere, frappe, cenci or galani and eaten in quantity at Carnival before Lent. Very similar doughs run right across the Alps and into central and eastern Europe — the Swiss Fasnachtsküchli, German Hasenöhrle, Polish chrusciki — all built on the same principle of an enriched, well-kneaded dough rolled until translucent and blistered in hot fat.