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Wafers, Dutch
Put seven ounces of flour upon a pasteboard, and work it to a smooth stiff paste with three ounces of butter, the grated rind of an orange, five ounces of powdered sugar, and one egg. Divide the paste into pieces the size of a pigeon's egg, form these to an oval shape, and bake in an oval wafer-iron.
A stiff sugar-cookie paste pressed between hot irons rather than a batter poured in — closer to Italian pizzelle than to anything called a wafer today. The whole recipe hinges on the paste being dry enough to hold its shape when it hits the plates.
- The weightsSeven ounces of flour is about 1 2/3 cups, 3 oz butter is 6 tablespoons, 5 oz sugar is roughly 3/4 cup if you read the period "powdered sugar" as finely ground granulated (modern confectioners' sugar would run nearer 1 1/4 cups). One egg — period eggs likely ran a little smaller than a modern large — is the only liquid in the dough, so work it in fully before deciding the paste is too dry.
- Pigeon's eggA useful old size cue meaning something between a large marble and a walnut — about half an ounce of dough. From this quantity (roughly a pound of paste) expect somewhere around thirty wafers.
- The ironA wafer-iron was two hinged plates on long handles, heated directly in the fire and turned once. An electric pizzelle iron is the closest substitute; a Belgian waffle iron is too deep and will give you thick cakes rather than wafers.
- Heat and timeNo temperature is given because none could be. Work hot: the plates should make a drop of water skitter. On an electric pizzelle iron each wafer takes 45 to 90 seconds, and the sugar means they colour fast — pull them at pale gold.
- Grease the plates onceButter or oil the plates lightly for the first wafer only. The 3 oz of butter in the paste keeps the rest from sticking, and repeated greasing makes them greasy and dull.
- Shape while hotThey come off the iron soft and set brittle within seconds. If you want them curled into cones or draped over a rolling pin, do it immediately; otherwise lay them flat to cool crisp.
- FlavourGrated orange rind is the only aromatic. Take the zest without the white pith, and grate it directly onto the sugar so the oil is not lost on the board.
- KeepingAirtight and dry, they hold their snap for a week. Any humidity turns them leathery, in which case a few minutes in a 300F oven will revive them.
Thin wafers baked between hinged, long-handled irons are among the oldest sweet baked goods in Europe, generally traced to the communion-wafer irons of medieval churches — a reconstruction rather than a documented line — and turning up secular by the later Middle Ages, when patterned irons carried coats of arms, initials and religious emblems. The Low Countries kept the tradition most vigorously — hence "Dutch" here, though the word is used loosely for the northern European style rather than a documented Dutch original — and the same tool produced the Dutch wafel, the Belgian gaufre, the Norwegian krumkake and the Italian pizzelle. What marks this version as later and richer is the sugar, butter and orange zest: citrus rind was an affordable flourish in a well-stocked Victorian kitchen.