Home › The Principles of Cookery › Waffles, Made with Yeast
Waffles, Made with Yeast
Beat three fresh eggs to a light froth; mix with them a pint of lukewarm milk and a large table-spoonful of fresh yeast, and add half a nutmeg, grated, a pinch of salt, an ounce of butter, and as much flour as will make a light batter. Put this in a warm place, and let it rise for two or three hours. Bake the cake in waffle-irons in the usual way (see WAFFLES).
A straight yeast-raised batter, closer to a pancake ferment than to the baking-powder waffles most people know. The instructions assume you know what a "light batter" looks like, so that is the point to settle first.
- The hinge: batter consistencyNo flour quantity is given because the cook was expected to judge by eye. Aim for something a little thinner than a drop-scone batter — it should ribbon off the spoon and level itself slowly, roughly the texture of heavy cream. With a British pint of milk (20 fl oz) that lands near 300-350 g of plain flour; start low and add more, since a stiff batter will not aerate properly.
- PintCassell's is a British book, so a pint here is 20 fl oz / 570 ml, not the American 16 fl oz. Scaling down by a fifth if you work from US cups will keep the proportions right.
- Yeast"A large table-spoonful of fresh yeast" means compressed or barm yeast, about 15-20 g. Substitute roughly 5-7 g (1½-2 tsp) of instant dried yeast, stirred into the flour, or the same weight range of active dry proofed in a little of the warm milk.
- Lukewarm, and why it mattersScald-hot milk kills the yeast; cold milk stalls it into a three-hour wait that never ends. Blood temperature, about 100F/38C, is what is meant.
- Half a nutmegThat is a genuinely large amount by modern taste o about about 2-3 teaspoons for a whole nutmeg, so half gives a teaspoon or more in a single batch. Half to one teaspoon reads as warmly spiced rather than medicinal.
- ButterOne ounce (28 g), melted and cooled before it goes in, so it does not set into flecks or shock the yeast.
- The riseTwo to three hours in a warm place gives a visibly domed, bubbling, faintly sour batter. Stir it down gently just before baking. An overnight rise in the refrigerator also works and deepens the flavour, but bring it back to room temperature first.
- "Waffle-irons in the usual way"The book gives no method at all, only the cross-reference. Period irons were hinged and long-handled, heated over the fire or on the range and turned once. An electric iron on a medium-high setting is the equivalent; brush the plates with butter for the first waffle even on a non-stick surface, as this batter has less fat than modern versions.
- YieldAbout eight to ten waffles from a standard round iron, enough for four.
Yeast-raised waffles are the older form by a long way: before chemical raising agents became reliable in the kitchen, a batter cake of this kind got its lift from barm ab the foam skimmed off fermenting ale ab or from compressed yeast once that became commercially available in the nineteenth century. The long rest does more than aerate; it develops a faint tang and a more open, custardy crumb that quick-mixed baking-powder batters do not reach. The heavy hand with nutmeg is characteristic of British sweet batters and puddings of the era, when whole nutmegs were kept with a grater in a pocket-sized case and used far more freely than they are now.