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WAFFLES (another way)
Dissolve half an ounce of butter in a pint of milk; beat two eggs in a bowl, and add to them gradually the buttered milk and as much flour as will make a stiff batter. Stir in a wine-glassful of fresh yeast and a little salt. Let the batter rise till light. Heat the waffle-irons, and bake the waffles in the usual way. Butter them, and if liked serve with sugar and powdered cinnamon.
A yeast-raised waffle batter of the sort that was standard before chemical leavening took over. It works well, but the original assumes brewer's barm and a pair of iron plates heated over coals.
- Milk temperature is the hingeWarm the milk only enough to melt the butter, then let it cool to blood heat before the eggs and yeast go in. Milk noticeably hotter than blood heat risks weakening or killing the yeast, and the batter will not lighten properly.
- "A wine-glassful of fresh yeast"This means liquid barm from a brewer, roughly 2 fl oz, and it is not interchangeable by volume with anything sold now. About 1 teaspoon of instant dried yeast, or 1/2 oz (15 g) of fresh compressed yeast, raises a pint of milk and its flour.
- How much flourThe amount is governed by feel rather than measure: add flour until the batter is stiff enough to drop heavily from the spoon rather than pour in a stream. Starting at about 3 cups of plain flour and adding more as needed is a reasonable way in, bearing in mind that a British pint is 20 fl oz. It loosens noticeably as it ferments.
- Let it rise till lightExpect 1 to 2 hours at room temperature, until the surface is domed and visibly bubbled, or leave it covered in the refrigerator overnight for more flavour. Stir it down gently before baking.
- The ironsVictorian waffle irons were long-handled hinged plates heated directly on the range and turned partway through. An electric iron on a medium-high setting does the same work; grease the plates for the first waffle even if they are non-stick, as this batter has little fat in it.
- Salt"A little salt" is about a teaspoon for this quantity. Less and the waffles taste flat, since there is no sugar in the batter itself.
- Yield and servingRoughly eight to ten waffles from a standard iron. The finishing of butter with cinnamon sugar is the whole seasoning here — the batter is deliberately plain.
Waffles descend from the medieval wafer, baked between hinged iron plates that were often engraved with patterns or coats of arms; the word itself comes through Dutch wafel. Yeast, not baking powder, was the ordinary raising agent for such batters through most of the nineteenth century, and a household cook might have used fresh barm from a brewer or compressed German yeast, which explains the vagueness of "a wine-glassful of fresh yeast" rom,, so the instrucrtion that matters is not the quantity but "let the batter rise till light". Cassell's gives this recipe under the title "another way", so at least one other waffle recipe precedes it, and its cinnamon-sugar finish has often been said to point to Dutch and German traditions, though the line of transmission is not established.