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Gauffres, Parisienne
Put half a pound of flour into a basin, with a quarter of a pound of castor sugar slightly flavoured with vanilla, a pinch of salt, two or three eggs, a table-spoonful of brandy and two of melted butter, and a little warm water. Mix all together to a thin paste. Heat the gauffreirons, brush over with clarified butter, and cover one side with a spoonful of the batter paste. Close the mould, and cook over the fire on both sides. When done, roll round a wooden roller to give them a circular shape. Probable cost, 1s.
This is a thin wafer batter for hinged irons, not a modern deep-pocketed waffle. The finished wafers are rolled hot around a stick, so everything hinges on working fast while they are still pliable.
- The quantitiesHalf a pound of flour is about 2 cups (225 g); a quarter pound of caster sugar is a generous half cup (115 g). Two tablespoons of melted butter and one of brandy are as written; the water is left to judgement, added until the batter pours like thin cream.
- Castor sugarCaster sugar is superfine granulated. Ordinary granulated works in a batter this wet, though superfine dissolves faster. "Slightly flavoured with vanilla" most likely points to sugar stored with a split vanilla pod, an old economy that gives a much fainter perfume than a spoonful of extract.
- GauffreironsA gaufrier is a pair of long-handled hinged iron plates held over a burner and turned to cook both faces. A modern electric waffle iron makes a thick, soft waffle; for the flat crisp wafer intended here you need a stovetop wafer or pizzelle iron.
- The batter should be thin"A thin paste" is the instruction that matters. A batter of pancake thickness spreads to a wafer that crisps as it cools and can be rolled. A thick batter gives a soft cake that will crack on the roller.
- GreasingClarified butter is specified because whole butter burns and its milk solids stick to hot iron. Brush the plates before the first wafer and lightly thereafter; overdoing it makes the batter slide and pool.
- RollingLift each wafer straight off the iron and wrap it round a wooden dowel or the handle of a wooden spoon. It stiffens within seconds, so only one can be shaped at a time. Any that harden flat can be returned briefly to the iron to soften.
- YieldThe book gives none. Expect roughly twenty to twenty-four wafers from this quantity, depending on the size of the irons. They keep a day or two in an airtight tin and go limp in damp air.
Gaufre descends from a Frankish word for honeycomb, the pattern the irons press into the batter, and the trade behind it is older than the name: medieval Paris had a guild of oublieurs who baked thin wafers between long-handled irons and sold them at church doors on feast days, often with the irons engraved with religious scenes or coats of arms. By the nineteenth century the wafer had largely shed its liturgical associations and become fairground and boulevard food, sold hot from portable braziers, which is the trade this Parisian version belongs to. Rolling the hot wafer round a stick, as here, produces the cornet or plaisir sold by street vendors. Cassell's gives a probable cost of one shilling.