Flannel Cakes.

Here is your daily food-history fix, from flood-damaged Brisbane. Please, if you have not already done so, consider giving generously to the flood appeal. 

Flannel cakes sound a lot more boring and utilitarian and correspondingly less affection-inducing than Singing Hinnies, the subject of yesterday’s post, but they are a variation of the same theme. I assume the name connects these particular griddle cakes with the softish, fluffyish fabric particularly favoured for winter pajamas – but I could very definitely be wrong.

Some descriptions insist they are crumpets, which throws up a whole new debate, as many or most definitions of crumpets give them as being leavened with yeast – yet most recipes are egg or baking-powder leavened. Deconstructing crumpets is perhaps a future blog post.

Many or most descriptions of flannel cakes do mention their thinness, and/or their lightness, so perhaps the fabric metaphor is correct. They are first mentioned in print in the late eighteenth century, but very little consensus about what makes a flannel cake different from a common garden kind of griddle cake. I give you two quite different versions for your griddle cake collection.

Flannel Cakes.
One quart of milk, three eggs, the yolks and whites beaten separately, a little salt, a small piece of butter melted, and as much flour as will make a batter. Stir the whites into the batter just before baking. If sour milk, with soda, is used, no butter is needed.
The Young Wife’s Cook Book, Hannah Mary Peterson, 1870

Flannel Cakes, or Crumpets
Two pounds of flour, sifted.
Four eggs.
Three table-spoonfuls of the best brewer’s yeast, or four and a half of home-made yeast.
A pint of milk.
Mix a teaspoonful of salt with the flour, and set the pan before the fire. Then warm the milk, and stir it into the flour so as to make a stiff batter. Beat the eggs very light, and stir them into the yeast.
Add the eggs and yeast to the batter, and beat all well together. If it is too stiff, add a little more warm milk.
Have your baking-iron hot. Grease it, and pour on a ladle-full of batter. Le it bake slowly, and when done on one side, turn it on the other.
Butter the cakes, cut them across, and send them to table hot.
Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats, Eliza Leslie (1836)

Quotation for the Day.
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
J.R.R. Tolkien

Hiawatha's Wedding Feast

Today February 27th …

The much-loved American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on this day in 1807. One of his most popular works is The Song of Hiawatha. Hiawatha is an Ojibway Indian who is reared by his grandmother Nokomis when his mother Wenonah dies of heartbreak at being abandoned by her husband Mudjekewis. When he is a man, Hiawatha sets out to find his father and avenge his mother’s death. The Song of Hiawatha is the story of his adventures, his love for the beautiful Minnehaha, and his realisation that the Indian must accept and befriend the White Man, because he has come to stay.

In the poem - one of the first to take Native Americans as its theme - he describes the feast prepared by Hiawatha’s grandmother Nokomis at his marriage to his beloved Minnehaha (Laughing Water).

XI. Hiawatha's Wedding-Feast.

Sumptuous was the feast Nokomis
Made at Hiawatha's wedding;
All the bowls were made of bass-wood,
White and polished very smoothly,
All the spoons of horn of bison,
Black and polished very smoothly.
She had sent through all the village
Messengers with wands of willow,
As a sign of invitation,
As a token of the feasting;
And the wedding guests assembled,
Clad in all their richest raiment,
Robes of fur and belts of wampum,
Splendid with their paint and plumage,
Beautiful with beads and tassels.
First they ate the sturgeon, Nahma,
And the pike, the Maskenozha,
Caught and cooked by old Nokomis;
Then on pemican they feasted,
Pemican and buffalo marrow,
Haunch of deer and hump of bison,
Yellow cakes of the Mondamin,
And the wild rice of the river.
But the gracious Hiawatha,
And the lovely Laughing Water,
And the careful old Nokomis,
Tasted not the food before them,
Only waited on the others
Only served their guests in silence.

Nokomis did her grandson and his bride proud. It was a worthy feast indeed, with the only mystery (for some of us) being the ‘Yellow Cakes of the Mondamin’.

In one of his adventures Hiawatha triumphs over the corn spirit Mondamin who has challenged him, and as a reward receives a gift which becomes ‘the friend of man’ - a plant with green robes and ‘soft yellow tresses’. Maize. The Yellow Cakes of the Mondamin then, are Corn Cakes.

Maize, thanks to the Native Americans they met, certainly also proved to be the friend of the early settlers who would have starved without it. None of the cookbooks they took with them from England would have had recipes for maize, for it is a truly American plant. It was not until 1796 that the first American cookbook was published, but it did include a recipe for corn cakes.

Indian Slapjack.
One quart milk, 1 pint Indian meal, 4 eggs, 4 spoons of flour, little salt, beat together, baked on gridles or fry in a dry pan or baked in a pan which has been rub’d with suet, lard or butter.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Food for Motoring.

A Previous Story for this Day …

The story last year was called 'Tuppence for Mutton'

On this Topic ...

If your interest in Native American Cuisine is piqued, and you would like to know more, go on over to Native American Cuisine and you will find out a lot more.

Quotation for the Day ...

“When you ask one friend to dine,
Give him your best wine !
When you ask two,
The second best will do”
Longfellow.

Tuesday Fritters.

Today, February 7th …

This day in 1665 was a Tuesday - Shrove Tuesday to be exact - and Samuel Pepys recorded his dinner in his diary:

“Up, and to my office, where busy all morning. At noon, at dinner, it being Shrove Tuesday, had some very good fritters.”

In the Christian calendar Shrove Tuesday is the last day before the beginning of Lent, when the faithful abstain from fleshly things for 40 days. It is the day to feast before saying “Farewell to Meat” (Carne Vale) and to use up the last of the eggs and milk and butter in a frenzy of fritter and pancake-making (hence “Pancake Tuesday”).

What is the difference between fritters and pancakes? Not much really. Both start with a batter of flour, milk, and eggs. A pancake is made by frying a small amount in a pan to form a thin cake (a pan cake – get it?), which becomes French if you call it a crêpe. This simple pancake is usually served with butter, or sugar or lemon or orange juice. It may, however, be filled by rolling it or folding it around something. If something is dipped in the raw batter and then fried, it becomes a fritter. Of course, not all fritters and pancakes abide strictly by this rule, but you get the general idea.

A religious excuse is not necessary to enjoy pancakes and fritters. They have been made and enjoyed since time immemorial in countries and cultures where the basic ingredients are found. They are easy to make and fun to eat - unless you have fallen victim to the campaigns of the world-wide Food Police who would have us banned from anything requiring f..ing.

Here is selection from across the ages, just to prove their versatility.

For to make Fruturs.[Apple fritters with saffron and ginger]
Nym flowre and eyryn and grynd peper and safroun and mak therto a batour and par aplyn and kyt hem to brode penys and kest hem theryn and fry hem in the batour wyth fresch grees and serve it forthe.
[From: The Form of Cury, 1390.]

Samacays. [Curd cheese fritters]
Take vellyd cruddys or they be pressyd; do hem yn a cloth. Wryng out the whey. Do hem in a mortar; grynd hem well with paryd floure & temyr hem with eyryn & creme of cow mylke, & make thereof a rennyng bature. Than have white grece in a panne: loke hit be hote. Take up the bature with a saucer & let hit renne in the grece; draw thy hond backward that hit may renne abrode. Then fry hem ryte well & somdell hard reschelyng & serve hit forth in disches, & strew on white sygure.
[From: An Ordinance of Pottage, by Constance B Hieatt; from a 15th C manuscript]

To make Fritters of Spinnedge [Spinach].
Take a good deale of Spinnedge, and washe it cleane, then boyle it in faire water, and when it is boyled, then take it forth and let the water runne from it, then chop it with the backe of a knife, and then put in some egges and grated Bread, and season it with suger, sinamon, ginger, and pepper, dates minced fine, and currans, and rowle them like a ball, and dippe them in Butter made of Ale and flower.
[From: The Good Housewife's Jewell by Thomas Dawson 1596]

To make Fritters.
Take halfe a pint of Sack, a pint of Ale, some Ale-yeast, nine Eggs, yolks and whites, beat them very well, the Egg first, then altogether, put in some Ginger, and Salt, and fine flower, then let it stand an houre or two; then shred in the Apples; when you are ready to fry them, your suet must be all Beef-suet, or halfe Beef, and halfe Hoggs-suet
tryed out of the leafe.
[From: The Compleat Cook, 1658]

P.S. This year Shrove Tuesday falls on February 20th, so you have time to practice. If the ones given above do not suit you, here are the links to other suitable recipes for fritters and pancakes featured in previous stories.

How Water Pancakes are made by poor People (1750)

Apple Fritters (1869)

Salsify Fritters (1870’s)

Kidney Fritters (1870’s)

Pets de putain (Farts of a Whore) – which are fritters by a funnier name. (1653)

Pink Pancakes (1797)

To make Raspberry Fritters (1769)

Bacon Froise (1695) – which is somewhere between an omelette and a pancake.

Australian Pancakes (1971) – an Englishman’s view.

Crêpes Suzette – the mystery.

Tomorrow’s Story …

First, Kill your Pig.

A Previous Story for this Day …

One of the cookbooks of Ambrose Heath was featured on this day.

Quotation for the Day …

I will here say nothing of the fact that some fast in such a way that they nonetheless drink themselves full; some fast by by eating fish and other foods so lavishly that they would come much nearer to fasting if they ate meat, eggs and butter, and by so doing would obtain far better results from their fasting. For such fasting is not fasting, but a mockery of fasting and of God. Martin Luther.

Dumplings for Eccentrics.

Today, January 10th …

It is universally acknowledged that the British have more eccentrics per capita than any other nation on earth. A superb British example of Extreme Eccentricity was born on this day in 1716, to die wealthy but alone and miserable a long, cold, hungry 78 years later.

That person was the most miserly of a famous family of rich misers, a man called Daniel Dancer. In spite of his fun-sounding name, he lived the life of a recluse, wore rags until they fell off him and slept on a bed of sacks and straw. He ate a single meal a day of a bit of meat and a single dumpling – apart from the glorious brief two weeks when he ate mutton pies made from the decomposing flesh of a dead sheep which he happened upon and did not want to waste. A little embroidery rarely hurts what is already an apocryphal story, and one version of this tale says that rather than waste fuel he heated his dinner by putting it between two plates and sitting on it.

The OED defines a dumpling as “A kind of pudding consisting of a mass of paste or dough, more or less globular in form, either plain and boiled, or inclosing fruit and boiled or baked.” In other words, they are the plainest of plain food, their sole purpose being to take away hunger as cheaply as possible.

Daniel came from Harrow in Middlesex, and Norfolk is the English county most proud of its dumplings, but in reality - a dumpling is a dumpling whichever county it hales from. The OED definition is almost a recipe, so here, in Daniel’s honour, I give you a couple of another alternatives suitable for “poor people”, from William Ellis, a Hereford farmer who lived at the same time as Dancer and wrote a manual of domestic and farm management in 1750.

How Water Pancakes are made by poor People.
This pancake is made by many poor, day-labouring mens wives, who when they cannot afford to make better, make this; by stirring wheat flower with water instead of milk, for if they can get milk, they generally think it put to a better use when they make milk porridge of it for their family. The flower and water being stirred into a batter consistence, with a sprinkling of salt and powder'd ginger, they fry the pancakes in lard, or other fat, and without any sugar they and their family make a good meal of them.

How a poor Woman makes palatable Mince-Pyes of stinking Meat.
This is a poor industrious woman that rents a little tenement by me of twenty shillings a year, who for the sake of her poverty is every week relieved, with many others, by the most noble lord of Gaddesden Manour; who killing a bullock almost every week for his very large family, he has the offald meat dressed, and is so good as to have it given away to the poorest people in the neighbourhood. But it sometimes happens, through the negligence of careless servants, that this charitable meat is apt to stink in hot weather, for want of its due cleaning, boiling, and laying it in a cool place: However, the poor are very glad of this dole, as it does their families considerable service. And to recover such tainted meat, this woman, after boiling and cleansing it well, chops and minces it very small, and when mixed with some pepper, salt, chop'd sage, thyme and onion, she bakes it: This for a savoury pye. At another time she makes a sweet pye of this flesh, by mixing a few currants and plumbs with it. But in either form the taint is so lessened that it is hardly to be perceived.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Hardy’s Ale.

A Previous Story for this Day …

Getting the Sauce on Vegetables, a story about the complexities of EU regulations, was the story for this day last year.

Quotation for the Day …

The fricassee with dumplings is made by a Mrs Miller whose husband has left her four times on account of her disposition and returned four times on account of her cooking and is still there. Rex Stout (1886-1975), creator of the fat detective, Nero Wolfe.