Pancake Day Plethora - Recipes from the 17th Seventeeth Century

Clockwise from far left Hannah Woolley's breadcrumb pancake,
crispy pancake boiled in lard from the Archimagirus
Anglo-Gallicus, Woolley's "Good Pancake" boiled in suet,
and centre-right Robert May's pancakes "Otherways".

From The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May's pancakes made with 
cream and clarified butter.

Today is Shrove Tuesday, otherwise known as Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), otherwise known as Pancake Day. It is the day before Lent begins, which in turn is the forty days leading up to Easter in some Christian religions. It was a traditional practice to confess one's sins this day, thereby being “shriven” (absolved) from them – hence the “Shrove.” Lent was and is a time to show a willingness to sacrifice by giving things up. That usually meant rich foods, so the Tuesday before became a day of feasting in which you used up things like eggs, butter, cream, and later sugar. You can make pancakes with those ingredients and so in some places they became another tradition. To honour Pancake Day, I give you a few kinds of pancakes from the seventeenth century with which you can keep up the ritual.

I may have gone a little overboard but I wanted to show some of the range of instructions given by period cooks. I present a couple from Robert May’s The Accomplisht Cook (1660) again – one pretty basic and one very rich. I add to that a couple from Hannah Woolley’s The Cook’s Guide (1670) and take one of her batters and use it to make an interesting variant from an interesting book the 1658 Archimagirus Anglo-Gallicus (just Latin for “English and French Chief Cook”). The recipes are short, so I present each one followed directly by my adaptions and thoughts.

Recipes based on The Accomplisht Cook

Pancakes “Otherwayes”

Makes about 5 thin pancakes

Ingredients

• 110g flour
• ¼ tsp salt
• A pinch of nutmeg
• A pinch of mace
• A pinch of cloves
• 1 egg, beaten
• 280ml water
• Fat for frying (I used beef suet

Instructions

Combine flour, salt, and spices in a large bowl.

Add egg, mixing with a fork.

Gradually add the water, stirring with a fork and then a whisk.

You should have a thin, fairly pale batter.

Over medium-low heat, melt a decent amount of fat in a frying pan and then pour all but a thin layer into a bowl for use with other pancakes.

Put oiled pan back on heat until just barely smoking.

Pour about a quarter cup or 60ml of batter into the middle of the pan and immediately swirl the batter around the pan to thin it out and reach the edges.

Cook until bubbles appear across the entire surface of the pancake.

Flip and cook for a minute or two on the other side. Check the underside for doneness after a minute.

Remove to a heated plate and repeat with the rest of your batter.

Notes

This is the cheapest and most basic of the handful of pancake recipes that Robert May gives in his book. I provide a richer, more difficult to work with one next. He also has ones that include rosewater, saffron, ale, cinnamon, and ginger. All of the others use cream not water as the main wet ingredient. Interestingly, another book - Countrey Contentments, or The English Huswife (1623) by Gervase Markham – condemns such ingredients, saying: “There be some which mixe Pancakes with new Milke or Creame, but that makes them tough, cloying, and not so crispe, pleasant and savorie as running water.”

May is appreciated in that he often gives measurements when other cooks do not. I reduced his period measurements generally by a factor of six – as best as I could - but if this were the only recipe you were using you could certainly double or triple my ingredients.

Overall, this is a basic crepe-like pancake serviceable as a vehicle for toppings, if a little bland.

“To make Pancakes”

Ingredients

• 237ml – a small carton - whipping cream
• 120g flour
• 1 egg beaten
• ½ tsp of nutmeg
• ¼ tsp of salt
• 115g of clarified butter, melted and cooled (see Notes)
• Additional fat for frying (I again used suet)
• Sugar for dusting

Instructions

Mix cream, flour, egg, nutmeg, and salt together in a large bowl.

Add the butter, stirring vigorously, by this time the mixture will be quite thick.

Heat fat in a large frying pan over medium-low heat then pour out all but a thin layer.

Drop three large spoonfuls of batter into the pan.

Shake the pan a little and tap your dollops with a spoon to get them to spread out. They will also naturally do this as the fat in them melts.

Be very patient with these and cook until a lot of bubbles form on the surface.

Carefully flip and cook for another 2-3 minutes on the other side.

Remove to a heated plate and repeat with the rest of your batter.

Scatter sugar over them and serve.

Notes

I reduced the original recipe by a factor of 8 as best as I could. I further reduced the nutmeg by another half because 1 tsp - based on my conversion from whole nutmegs - seemed like a massive amount.

The consistency of these in batter form is thick, even thicker than North American style pancakes, as opposed to what North Americans would call crepes, which are similar to some of the other period versions. 

If you can’t buy clarified butter, take about a half pound of good butter and put it into a heavy-duty Ziploc bag. Prepare two small pots half full of water: one simmering on the stove and one chilling in the fridge. Place the bag, one corner of the well-sealed opening side pointing down, in the pot on the stove. Allow the butter to melt completely and thereby separate into layers. There will basically be a large yellow – clarified butter - middle, with a thin skim of white on top and a white liquid that has collected in your bottom corner. Place bag, keeping the same corner down, in the chilled water in the fridge. Allow the yellow middle to solidify, this will not take more than an hour. Over a small bowl, open the corner of the bag that your white liquid has collected in, allowing it to drain into the bowl. Remove the solid yellow clarified butter and scrape off any remaining white bits clinging to it. Credit for the method goes to Thomas Keller but I saw no need to cut the Ziploc and instead just opened up the corner.

I will say I am not sure I read May’s instructions quite right but these were very tasty, if greasy, and so I leave what I did as a recipe. In the period instructions you can see above, clarified butter is included as one of the ingredients but when those ingredients are combined in the next clause, the butter is not one of them. I wonder in hindsight if that means they were merely fried in the butter. Two pounds is a lot of butter to fry in but a lot of fat is used in other recipes, as you will see. As I said what I did tasted good, though a little sugar and something tangy like lemon juice is all I would add to them, as they are super rich.

Recipes based on The Cook’s Guide

"To make Pancakes"

Makes one thick pancake

Ingredients

• 1 cup coarse breadcrumbs
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg, beaten
• ½ cup of water, lukewarm
• Spice to taste – I used 1/8 tsp nutmeg, 1/8 tsp cinnamon, and a pinch of cloves
• 1 tsp sugar
• Butter for frying

Instructions

Combine breadcrumbs, flour, salt and egg in large bowl.

Gradually add water, stirring as you go.

Season to taste with sugar and spices.

Melt butter in a large frying pan on medium-low heat.

Pour batter into the pan and swirl to thin out as much as possible.

Cook undisturbed until many bubbles form across the surface.

Flip and cook for another 3-4 minutes.

Serve.

Notes

This is a fairly unique recipe in that the base starch is breadcrumbs or grated bread with only “a little flour” but beyond that it is very simple.

Woolley does not provide any measurements, so this was an exercise in visual judgement and experimentation. It ended up like a thicker North American pancake because any more water and I felt like the breadcrumbs would not hold together. It looked a little loose as it was.

I just made one pancake with this because I was making so many others, you, of course, could double, triple, quadruple etc. it.

The look is darker, almost like a wholewheat or buckwheat pancake and it ate fine. It certainly had more texture than the other (non-deep-fried) versions I made. The bread gave a bit of a nutty flavour and it was more interesting than May’s basic version.

"To make good Pancakes"

(essentially deep-fried in suet)

Ingredients

• 350g of flour
• 4 egg yolks, lightly beaten
• 1 egg white, lightly beaten
• About 2 ¼ cups of water
• ½ tsp nutmeg
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt
• About 250g of beef suet

Instructions

Begin making batter by combining flour, the egg yolks and the white.

Add water a little at a time, mixing as you go, until you get a very runny consistency.

Add sugar and spices then stir to combine.

In a large frying pan over high heat, melt your suet until smoking.

Pour it off into a large heatproof bowl leaving a thin layer in the pan.

Reduce the heat to medium-high.

Pour about 80ml or 1/3 a cup of batter into the pan, quickly swirling it around to reach the edges.

Cook for a minute and flip, cooking for another minute on the other side.

Carefully pour your suet back into the pan, covering your pancake.

Allow to deep fry until you can see your pancake taking on a golden colour.

Remove pancake to paper towel on a heated plate

Repeat the process including increasing the temperature and heating the suet again for the remaining batter you are using.

Notes

Having given us a recipe “To Make Pancakes”, these are Hannah Woolley’s instructions “To Make Good” ones.

She does give measurements for flour and eggs in this one. I reduced her recipe by half, to keep the ratio of egg yolks to whites, but it still makes a lot and as such I used this very serviceable batter for the last recipe I tried. See below.

Woolley says to melt her suet in a posnet, a small metal pot with three legs that could sit directly over the fire, but I just did it in the frying pan I was using.

I ended up eating this version a fair bit after I made it and so probably did not get the best experience after deep-frying them. The suet did provide a nice meaty note and generally the batter works well in the pan.

Recipe from Archimagirus Anglo-Gallicus

"To make Pancakes that shall be to Crispe, that you may rear them up an end."

Ingredients

• ½ a batch of batter from Hannah Woolley’s “Good Pancakes.” See above.
• 150g of lard

Instructions

Melt your lard and set aside in a large heat proof bowl.

Put the smallest frying pan you have on medium-low heat.

Pour some lard into the pan and out again, leaving a thin layer.

Pour about 50 ml, less than a quarter cup, of batter in and quickly tilt the pan to swirl it around.

Cook about a minute until just set, flip your pancake and do the same on the other side.

Remove pancake to a plate and repeat until you use up your batter, stacking the pancakes on top of one another.

Set aside fry pan and place another medium pot on the burner. Increase heat to medium high and add all the lard.

Allow to heat for 3 or 4 minutes.

Carefully add 3 or 4 pancakes in a stack to the pot, making sure they are fully covered.

Allow to deep fry for a minute and a half and then flip the entire stack with kitchen tongs and fry for another minute.

Remove to paper towel on a heated plate and repeat with remaining pancakes.

Serve up with oranges or other pancakes around to hold the stacks upright on their side.

Notes

Archimagirus Anglo-Gallicus was reportedly printed from the manuscript recipes of Sir Théodore Turquet de Mayerne, a noted physician in England during the reigns of James I and Charles I. He treated Cardinal Richelieu in an earlier period in France and was later physician to the English Royal family and Oliver Cromwell.

There are a few cookery books that provide similar recipes, for instance, Murrels Two Books of Cookerie and Carving (1641) has instructions “To make Pancakes so crispe, that you may set them upright.”

These are dough deep-fried, so not surprisingly they taste very good and are nicely crispy. They need a sweet/sour accompaniment again, in my opinion, but are less heavy than Robert May’s cream and butter ones.

Despite making five different pancakes, I certainly did not exhaust the varieties that I found in the seventeenth century and I did not even try looking in eighteenth-century texts. Pancakes were a big deal in the period, it seems, as the Day remains today in some places.

Next week, I will try a recipe especially set down for Lent.