A history of Pancake Day recipes: From Elizabethan ale to a touch of ginger

With Pancake Day accelerated approaching, let’s spell backmost successful clip to look astatine nan history of nan humble dish.

Recipes from nan first published cookbooks show that successful England, pancakes were made very thinly – hence nan building “flat arsenic a pancake” – from tons of bedewed ingredients that were forbidden during nan impending pre-Easter Lenten Fast. Eggs, cream, food and animal fats are each products from which group were meant to abstain, alongside each different meats.

It makes sense, then, that nan dish, mostly eaten year-round, became associated pinch Shrovetide – nan days earlier Lent – erstwhile cooks wanted to clear retired their pantries to debar enticement successful nan agelong accelerated earlier Easter.

Early pancakes were cooked until crispy and served lukewarm pinch food and radiated pinch sugar.

It’s communal to spot a look successful aged cookbooks that utilized ale, overmuch for illustration nan coating of beer-battered food we’re acquainted pinch today. One recipe from a book published successful nan reign of Elizabeth I is simply a rich | matter which mixes:

This is seasoned pinch “a bully fistful of sugar, a spoonful of cinnamon, and a touch of ginger”.

The batter is group speech while nan navigator takes a knob of food “as large arsenic your thumb” successful a frying cookware and heats it until it is “molten brown”. Now extremity nan fat retired and ladle nan batter into nan tilted cookware arsenic thinly arsenic imaginable complete a debased heat. Flip erstwhile 1 broadside is “baked” and navigator nan different until nan pancake is arsenic barren (crispy) arsenic possible, but not burned.

English writer and writer Gervais Markham’s bestselling book of family management, The English Housewife, which ran to astatine slightest 9 editions from its first publication successful 1615, has a look for “the champion pancakes”.

In this dish, location are 2 aliases 3 beaten eggs to which you operation successful “a beautiful amount of adjacent moving water”. The eggy substance is seasoned pinch salt, cloves, mace, cinnamon and nutmeg, and thickened pinch “fine Wheate-flower”. You past fry a bladed furniture of batter successful sweetened food aliases seam (pig lard) and service radiated pinch sugar.

Markham recommends utilizing h2o complete beverage aliases pick because dairy “makes them tough, cloying and not crisp, pleasant and savoury arsenic moving water”.

Fritters aliases pancakes?

On Shrove Tuesday successful 1661, which fell connected February 26, diarist Samuel Pepys paid a sojourn to his relative Jane Turner’s house, wherever he recovered her mixing pancake batter pinch her daughters Theophila and Joyce. After leaving them to their preparations, he later returned to dine “very merry and nan champion fritters that ever I eat successful my life”.

In nan 16th and 17th centuries, nan names pancake and fritter were often utilized interchangeably, though fritters (like nan modern incarnation) were cooked pinch consequence successful them.

One of nan reasons Pepys enjoyed his pancakes truthful overmuch mightiness beryllium recovered successful a modern look book, The Gentlewoman’s Cabinet Unlocked (1675), which boasts successful its title that it will supply “directions for nan champion measurement of making pancakes, fritters, tansies, puddings, custards, cheesecakes; and specified for illustration good knacks and different delicate dishes, which are astir often utilized successful gentlemen’s houses”.

The writer doesn’t see a circumstantial pancake recipe, since location is 1 for fritters. A glimpse done nan ingredients listed shows why these were much apt to extremity up connected nan array of a man than that of a labourer:

“Take 9 eggs, yolks and whites, hit them very well, past return half a pint of sack [Spanish wine], a pint of ale, immoderate ale yest. Put these to nan eggs and hit them each together, put successful immoderate herb and salt, and good flower. Then shred successful your apples and fto them beryllium good tempered, and fry them pinch beef-suet, aliases half beef and half higs-suet dried retired of nan leaf.”

While earlier recipes mention topping pancakes pinch sweetener and sometimes things for illustration roseate water, it isn’t until nan 19th period that nan operation of citrus juice and sweetener appears successful print. But citrus juice had astir apt been utilized for a agelong clip earlier then.

Elizabeth Hammond’s Modern Domestic Cookery (1819) includes this pancake recipe: “Take eggs, flour and milk, pinch which make a ray batter. Add nutmeg, ginger and salt, fry them successful plentifulness of basking lard. Serve pinch citrus juice and powdered loaf sugar.”

A modern navigator mightiness beryllium amazed to spot Hammond recommending substituting “snow” for eggs during nan winter, “when they are mostly very dear”. This is simply a extremity for making eggs spell further by utilizing conscionable nan whites beaten until fluffy, leaving you free to usage nan yolks successful different dish.

While Markham and galore different cookbooks urge it, refined wheat flour was nan astir costly of grains and mostly thing that much able families ate regularly. It only gradually became nan ubiquitous constituent it is today.

In 1923, nan flour marque Be-Ro (founded successful 1880 successful nan north-east of England) began giving distant a look book to promote income of nan comparatively caller self-raising flour. This mini cookbook ran to complete 40 editions and is still available.

Like galore bluish homes, my family still person our copy, which is nan 16th version from 1953. While pancakes aren’t usually made pinch a raising agent, Be-Ro still offered a look for them.

The very bladed batter was cooked connected a “fairly brisk fire” successful lard which had been heated to smoking point, and served pinch sweetener aliases syrup and citrus aliases orange.

We tin spot from this really modern recipes became overmuch much precise pinch their measurements. The pamphlet ends pinch a informing that each its recipes are particularly designed for Be-Ro self-raising flour: “Ladies are warned that unless Be-Ro is used, satisfactory results whitethorn not beryllium obtained.”

Whether you’re readying to person a alternatively austere Be-Ro style pancake aliases are tempted to move things up pinch thing a small boozier, possibly nan cardinal takeaway from history is that location is nary logic to reserve pancakes conscionable for Shrove Tuesday.