Indian Slapjack

History

Indian Slapjack is a cornmeal batter cake in the pancake and griddle-cake family. Amelia Simmons's recipe beats together a quart of milk, a pint of Indian meal, four eggs, four spoons of flour and a little salt, then cooks the batter on a griddle, in a dry pan, or in a pan rubbed with suet, lard or butter. "Indian meal" was the period term for cornmeal, the grain that sat at the center of Simmons's cooking. A slapjack is an American flapjack — a griddlecake or pancake — and the word entered the written record in the 1790s, the same decade this book appeared; a flapjack is a cake of dough or batter fried in fat, named for the trick of flipping and catching it on the griddle once one side is done. Beyond the recipe and the griddle-cake family it belongs to, the documented record keeps little that is specific to this dish: it does not say who first cooked cornmeal batter under this name, whether the word or the cake began in Simmons's own kitchen or merely reached print there, or how the finished cake was eaten at an early American table.

Ingredients

• 1 quart milk
• 1 pint cornmeal
• 4 eggs
• 4 spoons flour
• salt
• suet, lard or butter

Instructions

1. Beat together one quart of milk, one pint of Indian (corn) meal, four eggs, four spoons of flour and a little salt.
2. Bake on griddles, fry in a dry pan, or bake in a pan rubbed with suet, lard or butter.