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Sour Milk Griddle Cakes
4 cups flour teaspoon salt 1 egg 2 cups sour milk 1½ teaspoons soda 1 tablespoon fat Follow directions given under sweet milk griddle cakes. 1½ cups flour
A standard sour-milk pancake batter that depends on the acid in the milk to activate the soda. It cross-references a companion recipe, so a few of the working details have to be supplied.
- Sour milkThis means naturally clabbered raw milk, which pasteurized milk will not reliably become. Use buttermilk cup for cup, or add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice or white vinegar to 2 cups of whole milk and let it stand 10 minutes.
- Soda and acidThe soda works on the acid in the milk. At 1½ teaspoons for 2 cups of sour milk this is on the generous side of the usual proportion (about ½ teaspoon per cup). Mix the soda into the dry flour rather than dissolving it in the milk, and cook the batter promptly — the lift begins as soon as the two meet and falls away before long.
- Flour quantityTwo figures for flour appear, 4 cups and 1½ cups. Neither works with 2 cups of liquid as a pourable griddle batter; 2 to 2½ cups of flour gives the consistency of heavy cream, which is what you want. Thin with a little more milk if the batter mounds instead of spreading.
- SaltThe recipe reads "teaspoon salt" with the number lost. One teaspoon suits 2 to 2½ cups of flour.
- FatThe tablespoon of fat would have been melted lard, bacon drippings or butter. Melted butter or a neutral oil is equivalent; stir it in last.
- The griddleHeat until a drop of water skitters rather than sits, roughly 375F on an electric griddle. Turn once, when the surface bubbles have broken and the edges look dry — a second turn deflates them.
- YieldAbout 16 to 18 cakes of four inches, enough for four people.
Sour-milk batters are a relic of the days before refrigeration, when a household with a cow had milk turning at the back of the pantry as a matter of course and no intention of wasting it. The acid did double duty: it tenderized the gluten and it gave baking soda something to react with, which is why American cookbooks of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries commonly carry paired recipes — one for sweet milk with baking powder, one for sour milk with soda.