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Wheat Griddle Cakes
A perfectly delicious wheat griddle cake is made with four cups of pastry flour, into which an even teaspoonful of soda and two of cream tartar has been sifted twice. Rub a half teacup of buttter into this flour, mixing it very thoroughly; add half a teaspoonful of salt, half a teaspoonful of sugar; then pour in four cups of milk, gradually mixing it in as you do, so as to avoid lumps. When the milk is all mixed in, bake the cakes as soon as possible and serve. Two teaspoonfuls of baking powder may take the place of the soda and cream tartar.
A plain soda-and-cream-of-tartar pancake, distinguished from the buckwheat cakes that dominated the same breakfast table by needing no overnight yeast sponge. A few of its measures need translating.
- Bake at onceSoda and cream of tartar react as soon as the milk goes in, and there is no second lift on the griddle to fall back on. The instruction to "bake the cakes as soon as possible" is the whole method; batter left standing loses much of its lift and cooks denser.
- The leavening ratioOne part soda to two parts cream of tartar is the standard home-mixed baking powder. By the usual equivalence of 1/4 teaspoon soda plus 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar to one teaspoon of commercial powder, the recipe's own closing alternative of 2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder is weaker than the mixture it replaces; nearer 4 teaspoonfuls matches it.
- Half a teacup of butterGenuinely ambiguous. A teacup in period cookbooks runs anywhere from a half cup to three-quarters, so this is somewhere between 4 and 6 tablespoons. Four tablespoons gives a tender cake without the griddle smoking.
- Rubbing in cold butterRubbing in the butter -- The fat is worked into the dry flour as for pastry rather than melted and poured in. The recipe specifies only that it be rubbed in and "mixed very thoroughly"; it says nothing about the butter's temperature.
- Pastry flourSoft-wheat flour of roughly 8 to 9 percent protein. All-purpose works, but the cakes come out chewier; replacing about 2 tablespoons of each cup with cornstarch moves it closer to the original.
- Batter consistency and griddle heatEqual volumes of flour and milk give a thin, pourable batter that spreads on its own. A griddle at 375F, lightly greased, browns a 4-inch cake in about two minutes on the first side and one on the second.
- YieldThree dozen or more 4-inch cakes from this quantity of batter. The sugar and salt are both minimal.
Before boxed baking powder was cheap and reliable, cooks made their own in the bowl: one measure of bicarbonate of soda to two of cream of tartar, sifted through the flour so the two powders could not meet until the liquid arrived. The closing line here offers two teaspoonfuls of baking powder as a substitute. The recipe's title is doing real work as well. "Wheat" griddle cakes are generally said to have been named to distinguish them from the buckwheat cakes raised with a yeast sponge set the night before, which were the ordinary winter breakfast in much of the country; a chemically leavened wheat cake could be decided on at eight in the morning and eaten at half past.