Waffles
3 cupfuls flour 2 tablespoonfuls melted Crisco 1/2 teaspoonful baking soda 1 teaspoonful salt 1 tablespoonful sugar 2 cupfuls sour milk 2 eggs Mix and sift dry ingredients, add milk gradually, yolks of eggs well beaten, melted Crisco, and whites of eggs beaten to stiff froth; cook on hot waffle iron greased with Crisco. Serve with maple syrup, or honey and butter. Waffles may be served for breakfast, luncheon, supper or high tea. A waffle iron should fit closely on range, be well heated on one side, turned, heated on other side, and thoroughly greased with Crisco before iron is filled. In filling, put tablespoonful of mixture in each compartment near the center of iron, cover, and mixture will spread to fill iron. If sufficiently heated, it should be turned almost as soon as filled and covered. In using new iron, special care must be taken in greasing, or waffles will stick. Sufficient for six waffles.
A straightforward sour-milk waffle batter from a Crisco-sponsored cookbook, written for a cast-iron waffle iron set over a coal or gas range. Most of the adaptation is in the equipment, not the ingredients.
- Sour milk means buttermilkIn 1915 this was milk left to clabber at room temperature, and it was generally acidic enough to react with soda. Use cultured buttermilk cup for cup; ordinary milk soured with lemon juice or vinegar works but is thinner and less tangy.
- The soda is on the low sideHalf a teaspoon of baking soda for two cups of sour milk will not neutralise all the acid, so expect a tangy, slightly dense waffle. The lift here comes mainly from the stiffly beaten whites, which is why folding them in last matters more than usual.
- CriscoStill sold, and the recipe was written to promote it. Any neutral oil or melted butter substitutes directly at 2 tablespoons; butter browns the crust faster.
- Electric iron instead of stovetopThe whole business of heating one side, turning, and reheating applies to a hinged cast-iron iron used over a burner. With an electric iron, preheat fully on a medium-high setting and skip the turning entirely, unless yours is the flip type.
- GreasingModern non-stick plates need nothing. Bare cast iron does need the greasing the recipe insists on, and a new or newly stripped iron should be seasoned with oil and heat before its first batter goes in.
- Filling and spreadA tablespoon per compartment placed near the centre is right for a shallow antique iron. Deep Belgian-style plates take considerably more batter; fill to about two-thirds and let it spread.
- DonenessIgnore the instruction to turn almost immediately as a timing guide. Cook until steam stops escaping from the seam, roughly 3 to 5 minutes, then check colour.
- Yield"Six waffles" means six full irons of the period's size.
This comes from A Calendar of Dinners, one of the cookbooks Marion Harris Neil wrote under the sponsorship of Procter & Gamble in the years after Crisco was introduced in 1911, which is why shortening appears in the batter, in the pan and in the greasing instructions alike. Hydrogenated vegetable shortening was a genuinely new product then, and books like this one existed to teach cooks that it could stand in for butter and lard in every role at once. The waffles themselves are much older: sour-milk batters cooked between hinged iron plates over a fire were standard American household fare through the nineteenth century, and the detailed advice on heating both sides of the iron and greasing a new one is a reminder that domestic electric waffle irons were not yet in general use, so the stovetop iron was the only option a cook had. The note that waffles suit "breakfast, luncheon, supper or high tea" reflects a period when they were treated as a plain everyday bread rather than a dessert.