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CORN MEAL WAFFLES
To the beaten yolks of three eggs, add one quart of sour milk or butter-milk, corn meal to make a batter a little thicker than for pan-cakes, one tea-spoon salt, one of soda dissolved in a little warm water, then the well-beaten whites; flour may be used instead of corn meal. This is also a good rule for pan-cakes, making the batter thinner. For dressing for waffles, put on the stove a half cup cream, a table-spoon butter, and two of sugar; when hot, put two table-spoons on each waffle when placed in the dish to serve.
A soured-milk batter leavened with soda, meant for a long-handled cast-iron waffle iron heated over coals. It translates well to a modern iron provided you respect the two things the original assumes you know: the batter must be mixed and cooked at once, and the iron must be very well greased.
- Mix and bake immediatelyThe lift comes entirely from soda meeting the acid in the sour milk, plus the beaten whites. There is no yeast and no baking powder to give a second rise, so the batter starts dying the moment it is combined. Have the iron hot before the soda goes in.
- Sour milk and buttermilkNineteenth-century sour milk was raw milk left to clabber, and its acidity varied with how warm the pantry was and how long it stood. Cultured buttermilk is the direct modern stand-in. Ordinary milk soured with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice per cup will work, though it is thinner and less tangy.
- Soda quantityOne teaspoon of soda to a quart of buttermilk is on the low side by modern proportions; something nearer a teaspoon and a half would come closer to neutralising the acid. Too much and the waffles taste soapy and the crumb discolours.
- The corn mealUse fine or medium stone-ground meal, white or yellow. Coarse polenta-grind will stay gritty in the short cooking time. Meal absorbs liquid steadily, so mix the batter, wait two minutes, then judge the thickness — it will be stiffer than it first appears.
- Batter consistency"A little thicker than for pan-cakes" means it should mound briefly on the spoon and then slowly settle. Expect somewhere around 3 to 4 cups of meal to a quart of milk, but go by feel rather than measure.
- No fat in the batterUnlike most modern waffle recipes this one contains no melted butter or oil, which means the batter will stick to anything less than a thoroughly seasoned or well-greased iron. Brush both plates with fat before every waffle, not just the first.
- CookingOn an electric iron, about 4 to 5 minutes at a medium-high setting; corn meal waffles want to go a shade darker than wheat ones to crisp properly. Steam slowing to a trickle at the hinge is the usual sign they are done.
- The dressingHalf a cup of cream, a tablespoon of butter and two of sugar warmed together is a thin pouring sauce, not a syrup — it will not thicken. Two tablespoons per waffle as directed is generous; it soaks straight in.
- YieldA quart of milk makes a large quantity — roughly ten to twelve standard round waffles, enough for six people. Halve it for a small household, since the batter does not keep.
Buckeye Cookery came out of Ohio in 1877, a compilation of contributed receipts. The recipe assumes two things now gone from most kitchens: sour milk that soured on its own in the pantry, and a hinged cast-iron waffle iron with long handles, set into the coals or over a stove hole and flipped halfway through to bake both faces. Corn meal in a waffle batter may well have been a matter of economy as much as taste in the Midwest of the 1870s, where meal was cheaper and more abundant than bolted wheat flour; the offhand note that "flour may be used instead" suggests which was the everyday choice and which the substitution. The cream-and-sugar dressing is a reminder that cream came from the same cow as the sour milk.