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Flannel Cakes
Flannel cakes, for which Philadelphia cooks were famous, were made of three cups of pastry flour, three cups of milk, stirred gradually into a tablespoonful of melted butter, and two well beaten eggs, with a teaspoonful of salt. This rule, however, does not give as good a result as when the eggs are entirely omitted and more butter used. In opposition to many cooks, we must affirm the fact, which experience will teach anyone who looks into the matter, that eggs are a superfluity in flour griddle cakes, and tend to make them tough; while a liberal amount of butter is needed to make a wheat flour cake tender.
A loose narrative rule rather than a numbered recipe, and it has one conspicuous omission: no leavening at all. Read the points below before you mix.
- The missing leaveningAs written this is flour, milk, butter and salt — it will cook into flat, heavy discs. Nineteenth-century flannel cakes were raised, either with a yeast sponge set overnight or with a spoonful of baking powder or soda-and-sour-milk in the morning. Assume roughly 1 tablespoon baking powder for 3 cups of flour, or a yeast batter left to work 8 hours.
- Pastry flourSoft, low-protein flour, about 8-9% protein. All-purpose will work but gives a chewier cake; replacing about 2 tablespoons of each cup of all-purpose with cornstarch (roughly 2 2/3 cups all-purpose plus 6 tablespoons cornstarch) brings it closer.
- "More butter"The author backs away from the opening figures — the eggs and the butter quantity — and never gives a replacement amount. A tablespoon of butter to 3 cups of flour is unusually lean; 3 to 4 tablespoons melted and cooled is a reasonable reading of "a liberal amount."
- Mixing orderThe instruction to stir milk gradually into the melted butter is worth following if you keep the eggs — cold milk poured onto hot butter will seize it into specks. Warm the milk slightly, or melt the butter and let it cool before combining.
- On leaving out the eggsThe claim holds up in part: egg protein does set firm and can toughen a thin batter cake. But eggs also carry structure and browning, and with no eggs and no leavening at all there is nothing to lift the cake. If you follow this advice, add chemical leavening.
- Griddle heatAbout 375F, or a drop of water that skitters rather than sits. Grease lightly; a butter-rich batter needs very little on the pan and will scorch if there is too much.
- YieldThree cups of flour and three cups of milk make a thin batter and roughly 20 to 24 cakes of four inches — six generous servings.
Flannel cakes were a genuine regional specialty, and Philadelphia had a reputation for them by the nineteenth century; the name is generally traced to the texture, a batter cake so soft and napped that it was said to be likened to flannel cloth. The defining feature in the older rules is a thin, yeast-raised batter set the night before, which produced a faintly sour, very tender cake quite different from the quick baking-powder pancake that displaced it. What makes this entry interesting is the editorial voice: the author prints the traditional Philadelphia proportions and then argues against them, staking out a position on eggs in griddle batter "in opposition to many cooks."