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Rice Griddle Cakes
For a small quantity, one quart bowl full, take one egg, two-thirds of rice (cooked), to one-third flour; one even teaspoonful soda, two even teaspoonfuls cream of tartar, or three even teaspoonfuls baking powder; sweet milk enough to make it the right consistency.
A leftover-rice pancake, written in proportions rather than measurements. The whole thing hinges on the ratio: two parts cooked rice to one part flour, by volume, in a batter that fills a quart bowl.
- Reading the quantities"One quart bowl full" most likely describes the finished batter, about 4 cups. Working backwards, that suggests something in the region of 1 1/2 cups cooked rice, 3/4 cup flour, 1 egg, and milk to consistency. The rice and flour proportion is almost certainly meant by volume rather than weight, though the recipe does not say so.
- Soda and cream of tartarOne part soda to two parts cream of tartar is homemade baking powder, which is why the recipe offers the swap. Three teaspoons of leavening for 3/4 cup flour is aggressive by modern standards; two is plenty, and the cakes will taste less soapy for it.
- "Sweet milk"Simply fresh milk, as opposed to sour or buttermilk. If you use buttermilk instead, drop the cream of tartar and keep the soda.
- SaltNone is listed, which is common in recipes of this kind. Add 1/2 teaspoon or the cakes read flat.
- The rice matters mostUse cold, fully cooked rice and break up every clump with a fork or your fingers before the milk goes in. Lumps of compacted rice stay gummy in the middle of the cake no matter how long it cooks.
- ConsistencyAim for a batter that mounds slightly and spreads on its own — thicker than a plain flour batter, since the rice will drink up milk as it stands. Add milk at the griddle if it stiffens.
- Griddle heatThe recipe gives none; a medium griddle (about 375F on an electric one), lightly greased, works. Give the first side longer than you would a plain wheat cake, and keep the pan from getting too hot, or the outside sets before the interior cooks through.
- YieldAround a dozen or more 4-inch cakes, three to four servings.
Rice griddle cakes belong to the large family of nineteenth-century breakfast breads built on yesterday's cooked grain — rice, hominy, oatmeal, stale bread crumbs — which turned up in cookbooks from Charleston to New England as a matter of ordinary thrift rather than novelty. Rice was cheap and widely kept in American kitchens after the expansion of Carolina and Gulf Coast rice growing, and a bowl of leftovers from dinner became the base of the next morning's cakes. The two leavening options in this recipe say less about its date than one might expect: commercial baking powder was on sale from well back in the century, but plenty of cooks still kept soda and cream of tartar separately and mixed their own, and recipes offering both appear from the 1860s well into the twentieth century, as this one does.