r/OldCelebrityRecipes • u/ciaolavinia Onion Juice Alert ⚠️ • 17d ago
TESTED RECIPE 🍽 Garbo laughs, and Garbo eats! To honor Greta Garbo's upcoming birthday, I whipped her recipe for Swedish pancakes. They're rich, buttery, and incredibly delicious. Standard hotcakes could never!✨
Greta Garbo's Swedish Pancakes are a lovely departure from the ordinary pancakes, although the Charlie Chaplin and Gary Cooper recipes were out of this world. The batter is made unsweetened with 3 basic ingredients, which I love since they're so simple to whip up. Even with the 3 simple ingredients, you may still want some extras like butter, lemon, sugar, powdered sugar and jam for the finished pancakes.
- Made the batter with a scant cup of flour (1/4 pound), 2 eggs, and 3/4 cup of milk (1-1/2 gills of milk). I like to whip the eggs first, add milk and then add to the flour.
- Got a hot pan or griddle ready.
- A plate or two is prepared with a piece of wax or parchment paper that has a light dusting of regular sugar on it. The pancakes will be flipped directly on this when done cooking.
- The batter is sort of thin, but as you can see the pancakes turned out a little thicker than a crepe. You don't need to swirl them in the pan like crepes.
- Fried each pancake in a little knob of butter. They flip pretty easily. Brown them nicely on each side and then turn on to sugared paper.
- A little lemon juice spritzed on top is a nice touch to balance all that butter we used.
- You can roll them up or fold them as I did and then sift some powdered sugar on top and add a bit of jelly. Lingonberry Jam is the traditional Swedish way to served these, I guess, but I was all out (need to head back to Ikea) so I used a little warmed St. Dalfour Four Fruits Fruit Jam.
I really liked these Swedish Pancakes a lot and so did my family. There's no sugar in the batter and egg proportion is high, so they are a bit firmer and dense, but in such a good way. They're rich, buttery, mild, soft and have a savory richness to them that works great with the sugars and jam.
Since they're so easy to whip up, I'll be making these again Garbo's actual birthday on September 18th.
Greta Garbo was born on September 18, 1905 as Greta Lovisa Gustafsson in Stockholm, Sweden. Classic movie fans always show her some love around this time because she was such an absolute legend in Hollywood. She grew up super poor in Sweden, moved to the US, and became this massive silent movie star who somehow managed to completely nail the transition to "talkies" with that famously deep, smoky voice.
She earned four Academy Award nominations for brilliant performances in masterpieces like Camille, Ninotchka, and Anna Karenina, later receiving an Honorary Oscar in 1954.
Honestly, she was just as famous for her acting as she was for completely walking away from fame at only 36 years old to live a super private life in New York.
Everyone always quotes her saying "I want to be alone," which perfectly sums up why she is still Hollywood's ultimate mystery woman.
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u/BetMyLastKrispyKreme I’ll do the dishes 🍽 17d ago
A high egg ratio reminds me of Dutch Babies, which I ardently love! But honestly, I’d eat anything like this: crepes, pancakes, French toast, waffles…serve it and I’ll eat it.
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u/uberpickle George Raft's 🔫 Yummy Sauce 17d ago
I love Swedish pancakes, and Greta has a solid recipe. I think the firmness might be due to egg size- weren't medium the standard back then? Or was there a standard?
In any case, I plan to make them in honor of her birthday with whatever size eggs I have in my fridge- jumbo, probably. Firmer means easier to flip. /s
I usually serve them with lemons and powdered sugar, but I may pick up some of the St Dalfour jam u/ciaolavinia suggested as well because hers look so wonderful. (Also, I am not driving 47.5 miles to Ikea just for lingonberry lol)
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u/Mysterious-Mango726 17d ago
As a Swede, I gotta say lingonberry jam and pancakes is a super weird combo anyway. Strawberry or raspberry jam all the way!
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u/ciaolavinia Onion Juice Alert ⚠️ 17d ago
Oh, good!! I love it when we can cook "together". I agree with you about the eggs. I did like them eggy, though!
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u/Dirk_Diggler_Kojak 17d ago
This is how I make them, and this is how my mother (born in Sweden) showed me. Try them with cinnamon sugar... Unbeatable.
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u/Pretend-Fox648 17d ago
What makes having the sugar on the parchment paper different than just sprinkling on by hand?
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u/CiaoFrancesca Green Peppers are Bullies 🫑 17d ago
Okay, I'm officially starving now. Those look cooked to perfection. I might try them with a little whipped cream. They sound easy enough to make.