A recipe Queen Elizabeth II purportedly gave to former US President Dwight Eisenhower 63 years ago has resurfaced on the World Wide Web, outlining the late monarch's technique for making 'drop scones', also referred to as Scotch pancakes.
The vintage recipe has reemerged in the wake of the Queen's death on September 8, with Britain's longest-reigning monarch passing away at her Balmoral estate in Scotland. She was 96.
A photograph of the recipe has recently been floating about on Reddit and so the story goes, the Queen gave President Eisenhower the directions for drop scones during a meeting in 1959. Eisenhower, who was in office from 1953 to 1961, died aged 78 in 1969.
Now despite being a Brit, I'd never heard of drop scones in my 25 years of life, so I decided to do some research. A quick Google search told me that drop scones, or Scotch pancakes, are essentially a simpler, smaller version of classic American pancakes, typically enjoyed for breakfast or as a snack with butter or lashings of jam. Sounds pretty delightful.
According to the Queen's instructions, one batch should make enough drop scones for 16 people - Sunday brunch, anyone?
The Queen's recipe is as follows:
Ingredients
- 4 teacups flour
- 4 tablespoons caster sugar
- 2 teacups milk
- 2 whole eggs
- 2 teaspoons bi-carbonate of soda (also known as baking soda)
- 3 teaspoons cream of tartar
- 2 tablespoons melted butter.
Directions
- Beat the eggs, sugar and about half of the milk together, add the flour and mix well, adding the remainder of the milk as required. Add the bicarbonate and cream of tartar and then fold in the melted butter.
Seems pretty simple and straightforward, right? Well, I wasn't about to try it (I struggle to cook rice and manage to burn microwave popcorn), but thankfully, a lovely BuzzFeed writer put the recipe to the test - meaning I don't have to!
When making the batter, she noted that the mixture blended nice and smoothly, but was a lot thicker than that of typical pancakes. She proceeded to use a ¼ cup measuring tool to scoop the batter into a butter-greased pan, to ensure the drop scones were consistent and of a smaller size. She cooked them like regular pancakes, but noted her batch only yielded around 10.
"They smelled buttery and looked moist. After taking the first bite, I was honestly a bit surprised by how delicious these were. They somehow taste way better than American pancakes... With that being said, these drop scones taste the way pancakes should taste," she wrote.
"They are delightfully chewy with a dense, pound cake-like consistency. They were great with some dollops of butter and jam. I would highly recommend."
So if you're looking for the perfect way to honour Queen Elizabeth's life this weekend ahead of her state funeral on Monday (local time), perhaps give this retro recipe a try.
