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John Locke's recipe for Pancakes (2021)
- LuciBb 3y ago[dead]
- MichaelMoser123 3y agomy pancakes aren't philosophically inclined, still here are my tips: - you need to add in the flower gradually, sifting it through a sieve while stirring the milk. - it helps to grate an apple and add that to the mixture, very recommended.
- ackbar03 3y ago> you need to add in the flower gradually, sifting it through a sieve This sounds like equal wealth distribution by the state. John would not approve
- MichaelMoser123 3y agoan ideological interpretation of a pancake recipe would be a totalitarian approach - i think that would be too modern for the 17th century.
- ycombinete 3y agoAdding the flour slowly sounds like a way to create stronger gluten chains, and a chewy pancake. If you’re making Dutch pancakes, or crumpets, this is ideal. American pancakes I prefer softer. My way of making soft pancakes is to mix the dry and dry wet ingredients quickly but gently, stirring as little as possible. I leave the batter it a little chunky even.
- calmoo 3y agoAdding it slowly is a common way to make Irish / UK / crepe pancakes.
- ycombinete 3y agoIndeed, that’s what I meant by Dutch pancake: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pannenkoek https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pannenkoek With these types of pancake you want to promote strong gluten development.
- MichaelMoser123 3y agoadding the flour gradually avoids having flour lumps in the mixture.
- dhon_ 3y agoI don't like sifting flour. I add the wet ingredients slowly to the dry and mix well while it's thick to a smooth consistency before slowly adding the rest of the wet ingredients.
- Pete_arten 3y agoI thought it was a recipe from John Locke for the TV series Lost.
- Jazzfussion 3y agoSame, but it is even more interesting to think that a philosopher of his caliber was so drawn by the simple pancake. It shows that all humanity finds the little joy in the simplest things.
- jader201 3y agoDon’t be ridiculous, it’s from the 17th century. This is Richard Alpert’s recipe.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoClose, the TV character was named after the philosopher (according to season 5, episode 7, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke_(Lost) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke_(Lost) ).
- juliusdavies 3y agoVery appropriate post for Shrove Tuesday !
- PaulRobinson 3y agoA strange state of capitalism that a day on which the religiously observant would use up things that could not be consumed during Lent, has been turned into an event where people go out and buy things for it specially. Which reminds me, we're out of nutella...
- PaulRobinson 3y agoAh, the "mention religion and get downvoted" downvote...
- pzmarzly 3y agoComing from a country where Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Tuesday) is not a thing, thank you for explaining to us what's happening :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrove_Tuesday https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrove_Tuesday
- jamesblonde 3y agoPancake Tuesday it is in Ireland.
- jamesblonde 3y agoIn Sweden, it's "Semmeldagen" today - same principle. Stuff your face before lent starts.
- twic 3y agoThe rest of Europe gets some variety of carnival, mardi gras or what have you, and here in These Islands we just get pancakes.
- dang 3y agoRelated: John Locke’s recipe for Pancakes (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30132612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30132612 - Jan 2022 (155 comments)
- gearhart 3y agoI tried following this recipe - it was tasty but very heavy and greasy. Perhaps philosophy and cooking do not require the same talents.
- morsch 3y agoYes, it seems like an insane amount of butter and heavy cream. Maybe butter in those days wasn't 80% fat and heavy cream wasn't 40%? Also, and it was covered by other commenters, but that amount of nutmeg, wow.
- eigenket 3y agoI think based on some inexpert googling that what Locke calls "sweet cream" is what a British person today would call "single cream" (or just "cream"). Based on comparing fat content (about 18%) this is roughly between what Americans seem to call "half-and-half" and "light-cream". On the other hand the butter content in this recipe is bonkers. The only way that makes sense to me is if you lose a lot of butter in the process of clarifying it, which is a step in the original recipe which isn't mentioned in the translated version in the article.
- cloudbonsai 3y agoI tried this recipe too, and came to the same conclusion. It has too much oil. Some historical context seems to be missing here, or Locke must have been an Epicurean.
- ido 3y agoI don't know how wealthy Locke was, but people generally ate less back then cause food was less readily available. Meat was more of a special occasion rather than everyday staple like it is for a lot of Europeans today.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- economicalidea 3y agoI made this a lot of times, it’s my favourite pancake recipe now - I go a bit easier on the eggs and butter but the nutmeg is the real trick!
- nemo44x 3y agoIf you’re changing the amount of eggs and butter then you aren’t making this recipe. Your favorite pancake recipe is inspired by this one.
- t-3 3y agoIt's probably reasonable to assume that the eggs he was using were smaller and less consistent in size than the sorted and graded eggs available at the grocery store.
- wsc981 3y agoI like Dutch pancakes and French crêpes a lot. The American style thick pancake is not my thing. That said, it seems this recipe results in a Dutch style pancake, so I would like to try to prepare it sometime. When I make pancakes, I usually just use: - eggs - flour - whole milk + water in equal amounts - cinnamon to taste - little bit of vanilla extract - some sugar and salt The resulting mixture should be slightly thick. Using whole butter to prevent the mixture from sticking to the pan. When smoke starts appearing around the pancake, it’s time to turn the pancake around in the pan. Should be baked on medium size fire. For every pancake add a little butter to the pan, wait for it to melt. For first pancake use more butter. I love this simple recipe.
- froh 3y agosmoke? or steam?
- formerly_proven 3y agommmmh, steamed pans!
- Neil44 3y agoSame, every sunday is pancake day in our house. It has to be normal butter. The smell, mixed with coffee, is amazing. But we just switched from gas to induction and I'm still dialling the process in again.
- throwaway2990 3y agoLemon+Sugar is my favourite.
- hiisukun 3y agoWhen my wife makes crepes, she mixes the recipe the night before in a jug. I don't know why (sorry!) but they turn out delicious and she swears this step is important. Lovely and thin, with a good consistency. I've also no idea if they are legit 'French crêpes'. The recipe is: - 1 cup of plain flour - 1 large egg - 1 1/3 cup milk (half milk half water usually too!) - 2 tblspoons of melted butter The first 3 are combined the night before and whizzed up, then left in the fridge. The melted butter you do on the morning of -- melt it in the pan then tip it into the other mixture and stir it a little. Having made it the night before is ideal if you're visiting a friend in the morning, too. Your pan technique sounds identical to us : ) ... enjoy!
- autarch 3y agoHow close or far is half a nutmeg from hallucination and death territory? Seems like an awful lot of nutmeg! Edit: So I looked into this. A single nutmeg is 5-10 grams. That means the pancakes will have 2.5-5g between all of them. According to a reddit post (https://www.reddit.com/r/nutmeg/comments/nd5d9q/nutmeg_effects_by_dose_and_dosage_information/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nutmeg/comments/nd5d9q/nutmeg_effec...), it seems like 5g of nutmeg could be enough for a trip, but it won't come even close to killing you. So if you make this recipe and eat _all_ the pancakes yourself, you might go on a trip.
- eigenket 3y agoThis is a lot of pancakes to eat by yourself. Just eyeballing the recipe it looks like you're looking at the order of about a kilo of pancakes at the end. If you solo these I think the nutmeg is going to be the least of your worries.
- Sakos 3y agohttps://www.healthline.com/health/high-on-nutmeg#warnings https://www.healthline.com/health/high-on-nutmeg#warnings LD50 seems to be on the order of grams per kg. Wild that 5g are enough for a psychoactive effect and that this recipe might in some cases be enough.
- reedf1 3y agoApparently there have only been two recorded deaths from nutmeg. One was an eight year-old boy who consumed at least two whole nutmegs and the other a college student who consumed 4 tablespoons (28g) of powdered nutmeg. Although there are cases of much much more nutmeg being consumed that were not lethal. There is one case in historical literature where a pregnant woman consumed 10-12 nutmegs (70-84g) to induce intoxication. This leads me to hypothesise that perhaps historical nutmegs were smaller, or that they were grown in unoptimal conditions so produced less myristicin.
- cubefox 3y agoAlso plant breeding may have progressed a lot since Locke's times, making them larger.
- ListeningPie 3y agoI remember seeing this recipe a couple of years ago, but I still haven’t made them. They just seem so expensive and unhealthy compared to a regular crepes recipe. 7 eggs for a 100 grams of flour, usually it’s 1 egg per 100 g. There is double the butter to the flour, my crepes recipe has 10 g of butter to 330 g of flour. I just can’t justify the experiment. Maybe I will make a 1/7 portion, but I can’t see it working out.
- eigenket 3y agoI think it mostly makes sense except for the amount of butter. Maybe in the process of clarifying butter back when this was written you'd lose a lot more butter? I don't know if modern butter has changed that much.
- Ensorceled 3y agoEggs were much smaller. For instance, my grandmother had free range chickens in the 70's and the eggs were all what would be labelled "small" with a few "medium" mixed in. Most modern recipes assume large eggs. But it is still a LOT of butter, cream and eggs.
- voidpointer 3y agoIn order to get close to how these might have tasted in Locke's time, one shouldn't be using modern white flour which is a 19th century development. Using (stone-milled) whole wheat might come closer to how things were in the 17th century. (Also better for your glucose levels)
- twic 3y agoIn Brittany they make pancakes with buckwheat flour, and they are absolutely delicious: https://www.seriouseats.com/savory-buckwheat-crepes-galettes-bretonnes-recipe https://www.seriouseats.com/savory-buckwheat-crepes-galettes...
- red-iron-pine 3y agoalso popular in Quebec
- throwup238 3y agoDrowned in butter and real maple syrup there is little difference in taste. You just have to adjust the hydration in the recipe.
- voidpointer 3y agoTexture-wise it should be very different due to how the gluten will develop. Taste-wise you are probably right. It’s mostly a substrate for the butter and syrup.
- alephnerd 3y ago> (stone-milled) whole wheat If you want it on the cheap, go purchase Atta at your local Indian convinence store. Similar for stone milled cornflour (I've found Hispanic store prices have been going up lately compared to Asian stores)
- Exoristos 3y agoThey removed the bran, just not the germ. An equivalent today might be white flour with a little added wheat germ.
- flr03 3y agoI prefer Chef Raymond Oliver's version https://www.aboutahandful.com/crepes-oliver/ https://www.aboutahandful.com/crepes-oliver/
- offices 3y agoWhat an enormous margin - presumably left intentionally, for later notes
- juanrapido 3y agoI believe John Locke spend much of his time between 1683-1689 in the Netherlands as he had fled England for being under suspicion of bad things. As mentioned in another reply, this is indeed a Dutch pancake recipe. And the recipe does contain an 85 (or is 86?) in the top right corner. The addition of nutmeg, while very decadent, would have made sense when considering that Locke traveled between the cities of Holland, at that time the heart of the Dutch overseas trading empire. It spanned to such places as the island of Java, where you could pick the nutmeg right off of the tree.
- eigenket 3y agoI'm pretty sure the 85 in the corner is the folio number 85 given in the description "Oxford, Bodleian Libraries MSS. Locke c. 25, fol. 85.". I.e. its the page number. On the other hand you may be right about the rest of what you write.
- jszgembo 3y agoIn the final photo, the pancakes appear to be somewhat dry and thick. This might be more characteristic of Slovenian or European styles, where we typically cook them until they're just lightly browned and thinner. :)
- kwhitefoot 3y agoStrange (or should I say typical) that the author should give us an updated recipe that partly shows the weights in grams and then proceeds to use cups and tablespoons without specifying the actual volume. Locke's original is more precise.
- Sardtok 3y ago"take off the skum". They totally forgot this step in the updated recipe. Now your pancakes will be full of scummy butter. Didn't know "skum" used to be an English word, or that its meaning changed to what is scum today. In nordic languages it still just means foam.
- geye1234 3y agoThis recipe looks most substantial, which is not what you'd expect.
- orblivion 3y agoMix your labor into the pancake batter and you will be the rightful owner of the pancakes.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Fricken 3y agoIn 1621 The Dutch waged a bloody battle to secure control of the Banda Islands, which was for the west the only known source of Nutmeg, and prior to knowing the source Europe paid exorbitant prices for Nutmeg that came to Venice via Arab traders. The colonial history of the Banda Islands is fascinating and terrible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banda_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banda_Islands
- pjmorris 3y agoI've heard people speak of the book 'The Nutmeg's Curse', Ghosh, which dwells on the history here.
- pfdietz 3y agoThis was more than a century before the invention of baking powder.
- samstave 3y agoIf you havent seen this channel on YT; cowboy cooking: https://www.youtube.com/@CowboyKentRollins/videos https://www.youtube.com/@CowboyKentRollins/videos Its really fn great. The video on how to stock a chuck wagon was great. Its all outdoor cooking over fire - and there is so much great knowledge in these vids.
- ofslidingfeet 3y agoWe should be reading his Second Treatise on Civil Government not his pancake recipe.
- ofslidingfeet 3y ago[flagged]
- mjhay 3y ago> Take sweet cream 3/4 + pint. Flower a quarter of a pound. Eggs four 7 leave out two 4 of the whites. Beat the Eggs very well. Then put in the flower, beat it a quarter of an hower. Then put in six spoonfulls of the Cream, beat it a litle Take new sweet butter half a pound. Melt it to oyle, & take off the skum, power in all the clear by degrees beating it all the time. As wonky as English orthography is, I'm still very glad it has been largely standardized.
- LaurenSerino 3y agoI, too, enjoy a nice, fluffy, social contract