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Wheaten Cakes
One-quarter pound flour, one raw egg, one-half ounce powdered sugar, one-quarter ounce baking powder, one-half pint cold milk and a saltspoon salt. Place the flour in a bowl with the sugar, baking powder, milk and salt, and carefully break in the egg. Briskly mix with a whisk until thoroughly thickened.
Lightly butter the bottom of a large black frying pan with one-half ounce melted lard, and as soon as the bottom of the pan is thoroughly hot immediately pour in some of the preparation with the aid of a ladle, making four cakes two inches and a half in diameter, and cook for two minutes on each side, seeing that they are of a nice golden colour, but not black. Dress on a hot dish, cover with a napkin and keep hot; then proceed to prepare the balance in the same way. Serve with maple syrup separately.
A plain drop-batter griddle cake, notable mainly for being made with wheat flour at a time when American breakfast cakes were as often buckwheat or cornmeal. The measurements are by weight, which makes them easier to reproduce than most recipes of the period.
- The weights in cupsA quarter pound of flour is about 115 g, a scant cup by scoop-and-level. Half an ounce of sugar is a rounded tablespoon, and a saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon.
- Half a pint of milkIn an American book of this date that is 8 fl oz (1 cup). Against a quarter pound of flour that gives a thin, pourable batter, closer to a crepe than a fluffy stack pancake.
- The baking powder is heavy-handedA quarter ounce is roughly 1½ teaspoons for one cup of flour, appreciably more than the modern teaspoon-per-cup. At that dose with a current powder you may taste metallic bitterness. A teaspoon is plenty.
- Rest or don'tThe instruction to whisk "until thoroughly thickened" means only until smooth and slightly viscous, not aerated. With this much leavening the batter starts working immediately, so cook it promptly rather than letting it sit.
- The black frying panCast iron, seasoned and preheated over medium heat until a drop of water skitters. The half ounce of lard (a tablespoon) is brushed on thinly, not pooled — these are griddle cakes, not fried in fat.
- Two minutes a side is a maximumSmall thin cakes on properly hot iron will be set and bubbling in about a minute, ready to turn, and need less on the second side. Watch the colour rather than the clock; the recipe's own standard is golden, not black.
- Keeping them hotThe napkin over the dish traps steam and keeps the cakes pliable, which works but softens the edges. A low oven at 200F on a rack is drier and better if you want to hold a batch.
- YieldRoughly a dozen to sixteen cakes at 2½ inches — two servings, three if the rest of the breakfast is substantial.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906); Filippini spent decades at Delmonico's in New York, and his books collect dishes from across Europe and America alongside the French repertoire he cooked professionally. The word "wheaten" in the title is doing real work: in nineteenth-century America a breakfast "cake" off the griddle was as likely to be buckwheat, cornmeal or rye-and-Indian as it was plain white flour, and cookbooks routinely specified which grain was meant. The maple syrup is served separately rather than poured over, a formula the book uses throughout.