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WAFFLES (a Danish recipe)
Take one pound of fresh butter, and beat it till it creams. Add the yolks of six eggs, a quarter of a pound of sugar, one pound of flour, a quart of warm milk, and lastly the whites of the eggs beaten to snow. Butter the waffle-irons each time before filling them, and heat them before using. When baked strew sifted sugar over the waffles. This quantity will make twenty-four waffles.
A very rich, unleavened batter that rises on beaten whites alone, so the folding and the heat of the iron do all the work. Weigh the flour and butter rather than guessing.
- The hinge: the whitesThere is no baking powder, no yeast and no soda here. The only lift comes from the six whites beaten to firm peaks and folded in at the very end, so fold gently and bake the batter promptly rather than letting it stand.
- Imperial measuresCassell's quart is the imperial 40 fl oz, about 5 US cups; a US quart of 4 cups will give a slightly thicker batter and is a reasonable substitute. A pound of flour is roughly 3 1/2 cups scooped and levelled, and the quarter pound of sugar about 1/2 cup.
- "Warm" milkWarm here most likely means no more than lukewarm, enough to keep the creamed butter from seizing into flecks; very hot milk risks curdling the yolks, so let it cool to hand temperature before combining.
- A pound of butterThis is an unusually rich batter by modern standards, a dessert waffle rather than a breakfast one. Cream it thoroughly before the yolks go in or the fat will separate out on the iron.
- The waffle-ironsThe original means hinged cast-iron plates heated at the fire or on the range and turned by hand. On an electric iron set a medium-high heat and expect the first waffle to be a test; the instruction to butter the plates each time still applies to older uncoated irons, though a modern non-stick iron needs little or none.
- Batter consistencyWith the full imperial quart the batter pours thin. Use less milk if your iron overflows easily, and fill only about two-thirds of the grid.
- Yield and servingTwenty-four waffles from these quantities means small, thin Scandinavian ones, not deep Belgian squares; expect roughly half that number from a large modern iron. Sifted sugar over the top is the only finish the recipe gives; jam and cream are common Scandinavian accompaniments today.
Waffle irons are among the older specialised baking tools of northern Europe, generally held to descend from the medieval wafer irons used to press thin communion and festival wafers between decorated plates, and Denmark, Norway and Sweden all developed a domestic tradition of thin, crisp vafler baked at the fire, sometimes in the heart-shaped plates still sold in Scandinavia today. Cassell's, which set out to be a dictionary of cookery rather than a national cookbook, collected foreign recipes of this sort under their dish name with the country appended, and this one is characteristic of a richer festive version: a great deal of butter, no chemical leavening, and beaten whites doing the work that baking powder would do in a comparable English or American recipe. The finishing dusting of sifted sugar suggests a sweet course or something for the coffee table rather than anything served with meat.