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Comment by Firmwarrior | Hacker News Reader

Why would he beat the batter for 15 minutes? Did flour back then not have as much gluten?

This is all the info I could manage to find about this on my own: (mangled the link since the site is jam-packed with ads and trackers)

www.realsimple (dot) com (slash) food-recipes/cooking-tips-techniques/pancake-secret-ingredient-gluten

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My hunch is no baking powder. I've made pancakes without baking powder by heavily beating the eggs before gently folding in the other ingredients. Haven't tried this particular recipe.

Yep that's the one-- gotta get gas into the batter somehow

It so much in an English pancake, which these are in the picture.

English pancakes are flat.

Throw in some beer, works a charm for the taste too

Beer in pancake batter? Interesting idea, never thought of.

or just soda water

On new years day (YYYY-1-1) we traditionally make it with champagne

Very cool

Yeah, I always use beer as well. Works great.

0.2l Milk, 2 eggs, 80g flour, 15g butter, 30g sugar, 85g beer. Mix milk, eggs, and everything else except the butter and beer. Melt the butter and mix it in too. Add beer, drink the rest. Then make pancakes.

Never had beer batter? That's a shame

https://www.lacucinaitaliana.com/recipe/cakes-and-desserts/b...

Yeasted batter makes amazing waffles and pancakes. You need to make it the day before you use it but it’s completely worth it.

Flour was not milled as finely or consistently so more mixing was required and gluten development was not as much of a concern.

The recipe has 1.5 cups heavy cream, which will become fluffy when you beat it that long, making the pancakes lighter and fluffier.

Except you add the cream after beating the eggs and flour in the original recipe.

Today's waffle and some pancake batter recipes will call for beating the eggs until light and fluffy, which takes a few minutes in a mixer and could take 15 minutes by hand. Then you typically fold or mix the flour and dairy (milk, cream, or buttermilk) into the eggs, alternating small amounts of each. Then add the clarified butter. That's how I would adapt the recipe to the use of a mixer.

Also, I would make sure to use salted butter in this recipe or add a small amount of salt.

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