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Sour Milk Griddle Cakes
1 tablespoonful melted Crisco 2 cupfuls flour ½ teaspoonful salt 1 teaspoonful baking soda 2 cupfuls sour milk 1 egg 1 tablespoonful sugar Sift dry ingredients, add milk, well beaten egg, and melted Crisco. Drop by spoonfuls on hot griddle, greased with Crisco. Cook until browned, then turn and cook on other side. Serve hot with syrup. Sufficient for eighteen cakes.
Breads, etc.
A plain sour-milk pancake of the sort every American cookbook carried before commercial baking powder took over the griddle. Two things need translating: the milk and the fat.
- Sour milk means cultured, not spoiledIn 1913 this meant raw milk left to clabber, which soured with lactic acid bacteria. Modern pasteurized milk goes off rather than sours, so use buttermilk. Two cups of buttermilk, or two cups of milk with two tablespoons of lemon juice or white vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes, gives the same acid the soda needs.
- Crisco is vegetable shorteningThe book was published to promote it, hence the name in every line. A tablespoon of any neutral melted fat or oil works much the same here; melted butter adds a flavour the original does not have.
- The soda is the leaveningA full teaspoon of baking soda against two cups of acidic milk is the whole rising mechanism. If you substitute sweet milk the cakes will be flat and faintly soapy — the acid is not optional.
- Mix late, cook soonThe soda begins reacting the moment it meets the buttermilk. Combine wet and dry just until the flour disappears, lumps and all, and get the batter onto the griddle within a few minutes rather than letting it stand.
- Griddle heatNo temperature is given; the recipe says only 'hot griddle'. Aim for about 375°F on an electric griddle, or medium heat in a heavy pan — a drop of water should skitter, not vanish instantly. Turn once, when the surface bubbles have opened and stopped filling in.
- Batter consistencyTwo cups flour to two cups milk gives a fairly loose batter, though the recipe directs dropping it by spoonfuls rather than pouring. If your buttermilk is very thick, expect to add a splash more liquid.
- YieldEighteen cakes as stated, which is roughly four to six servings depending on appetite and whether anything else is on the table.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with a product that was still unfamiliar: a solid white fat made from hydrogenated cottonseed oil, neither lard nor butter. The recipes are conventional on purpose — griddle cakes were a long-established staple of American home baking — because the point was to demonstrate that Crisco slotted into familiar cooking without changing the results. Sour milk baking itself belongs to an older household economy, when a dairy household had milk turning at various stages and no reason to waste it; the acid clabbered milk carried was the natural partner to saleratus and later baking soda, and the pairing survived long after refrigeration made genuinely soured milk a rarity. The section heading here, "Breads, etc.," is a reminder that griddle cakes were understood as a quick bread rather than a sweet course.