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Wafers, with Jelly
Beat a quarter of a pound of fresh butter to cream. Add half a pound of powdered sugar, two eggs well beaten, a quarter of a pint of milk, a table-spoonful of brandy, a table-spoonful of orange-flower water, half a nutmeg, grated, half a tea-spoonful of powdered cinnamon, a quarter of a tea-spoonful of baking-powder dissolved in a little hot water, and as much flour as will make a very thick smooth batter. Beat the mixture well. Butter a large baking-sheet, and spread the batter upon it in a layer not more than an eighth of an inch thick. Bake in a moderately-heated oven till it is set. Cut it in halves; spread a little jelly upon one half, and lay the other half upon it. When cold, cut it into fingers with a sharp knife. Pile these in a glass dish, and serve. Time to bake the batter, about a quarter of an hour. Probable cost, exclusive of the jelly, 1s. 2d. Sufficient for a good-sized dish.
A thin, spiced sheet-cake baked flat, sandwiched with jelly and cut into fingers — closer to a modern tray bake than to an iron-pressed wafer. Two things decide the result: how thinly you spread the batter, and cutting it before it cools hard.
- The hinge: cut and fill while warmThe hinge: fill before the sheet sets hard -- The sheet is only an eighth of an inch thick. The recipe's order — halve it, spread the jelly, lay the second half on, then cut fingers 'when cold' — implies the filling goes on before the sheet has cooled and stiffened, though it does not say so outright.
- Moderately-heated ovenRead this as roughly 350F/175C; Victorian oven descriptions are approximate. At about a quarter of an hour a sheet this thin should be set and just colouring at the edges; much hotter and the perimeter hardens before the middle sets.
- Quarter of a pint of milkImperial measure, so 5 fl oz — a scant 2/3 US cup. The imperial pint is 20 fl oz, not 16, and the difference matters in a batter this small.
- Flour is left to your judgementNo quantity is given: "as much flour as will make a very thick smooth batter" means spreadable but not pourable, roughly the consistency of thick frosting. Add it gradually and stop when the batter will spread rather than pour.
- Half a nutmegRoughly 1 to 1.5 teaspoons freshly grated, which is assertive by current taste. Reduce it if you prefer, leaving the cinnamon as written.
- Orange-flower waterStill sold, usually in Middle Eastern groceries and the baking aisle. Modern bottles vary widely in strength; taste the batter and hold back if yours is a concentrate rather than a distillate.
- Baking powder dissolved in hot waterA common instruction in period recipes; no reason is given here. You can sift it with the flour instead and omit the extra water, which would otherwise loosen the batter.
- The jellyA firm, clear fruit jelly — redcurrant, quince or apple — not a soft jam or a gelatine dessert. It needs to hold its shape between two thin sheets without soaking them.
- YieldA full baking sheet gives one sandwiched slab; the recipe says only that it is "sufficient for a good-sized dish". The number of fingers depends on how you cut them.
True wafers were baked between two hinged iron plates over the fire, a technique medieval in origin and still alive in Victorian kitchens through gaufre and wafer irons; the word itself comes from an Old French relative of "waffle." This version has abandoned the irons for a baking sheet and a thinly spread batter, a shortcut that turns a specialist item into something any household cook could produce for a tea table. The flavourings are the familiar ones of English sweet baking: brandy, orange-flower water, nutmeg and cinnamon, all in wide use long before the Victorian period. The costing in shillings and pence is given as a matter of course, as was the habit of Cassell's, a household manual of the later nineteenth century.