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Griddle Cakes
2 tablespoons Mazola 2 tablespoons Karo, Red Label 1 egg, beaten 2 cups milk 1/3 cup Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 2¼ cups flour 4 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt Combine the Mazola, Karo, egg and milk. Sift together the dry ingredients, beat into the liquid mixture until all the lumps have disappeared and the mixture looks bubbly. Fry on a griddle slightly oiled with Mazola, putting the batter on by tablespoonfuls and keeping the cakes well separated. Turn as soon as they are bubbly all over. Serve at once with Karo or fruit syrup.
A brand-led pancake formula from a corn-products promotional booklet: every named ingredient is a Corn Products Refining Company line. The substitutions are straightforward, and the cornstarch is what makes these cakes different from a plain flour batter.
- The brand namesMazola is corn oil, so any neutral oil works. Argo and Kingsford's are both cornstarch. Karo is corn syrup — the Red Label grade was the darker, more caramel-flavoured one, so use dark corn syrup for the closest match, or light if you want a milder cake.
- Why the cornstarchA third of a cup of starch replacing part of the flour cuts gluten and gives a noticeably tenderer, more delicate cake. Do not swap it out for more flour or you lose the point of the recipe.
- Mixing"Until all the lumps have disappeared" is more beating than modern pancake practice advises, but the starch dilution keeps the batter from toughening. Stop once it is smooth and bubbly rather than continuing to work it.
- Griddle heatThe recipe gives no temperature; a moderately hot griddle, in the region of 350-375F, suits it — a drop of water should skitter and vanish in a couple of seconds. Oil the surface very lightly and wipe off any pooling; corn oil left in a slick will fry rather than griddle the cakes.
- Size and turningTablespoonfuls give small, roughly silver-dollar cakes, and the book asks that they be kept well separated. The turning cue is sound: flip when the surface is bubbled over, roughly 1 to 2 minutes, then 30 to 60 seconds on the second side.
- ConsistencyTwo cups milk to about two and two-thirds cups of flour plus starch makes a batter thick enough to drop by the spoonful rather than pour. If it thickens as it stands, thin with a spoonful of milk rather than letting the cakes set up heavy.
- YieldA large batch of small cakes; count on well over two dozen. Hold finished cakes in a single layer on a rack in a low oven; stacking them steams the crust soft.
This is a house recipe from a Corn Products Refining Company booklet, and it reads like one: Mazola oil, Karo syrup, and Argo or Kingsford's cornstarch appear in a single short list because the company sold all of them. Karo corn syrup was introduced in the first years of the twentieth century and Mazola corn oil about a decade later, and both were promoted hard through free and cheap recipe pamphlets that showed home cooks how to use a corn syrup in place of sugar and a seed oil in place of butter or lard. The cornstarch in the batter is the giveaway detail — a genuinely useful technique for tender cakes, and also a third product moved off the shelf. Griddle cakes themselves were long established as an American breakfast staple, cooked on a soapstone or iron griddle over the range; what the booklet contributes is the refined-corn pantry, syrup poured over cakes made partly of corn starch and cooked in corn oil.