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Waffles, Made Without Yeast or Soda
Take a pint and a quarter of flour, and as much additional flour as will go into a wineglass; mix with it half a tea-spoonful of salt. Dissolve two ounces of butter in a pint of hot milk, and let the milk cool. Beat the yolks of three eggs in a bowl, and add to them the milk and the flour alternately. Whisk the whites of the eggs separately to a firm froth, and stir them lightly into the batter. Do not beat the batter after the whites are added, but bake the waffles immediately.
A plain egg-white-raised batter with no chemical leavening at all, which makes the handling of the whites the whole recipe.
- The hinge: fold and bake at onceThe only lift here comes from the beaten whites, so fold them in with a spatula in a few strokes and start baking immediately, exactly as the recipe directs. Batter left standing will lose air and give flatter waffles.
- Measuring flour by volumeCassell's uses the imperial pint (20 fl oz), so a pint and a quarter of flour is 25 imperial fl oz, roughly 3 US cups, and the wineglass of extra flour perhaps 2 fl oz more, say another 1/4 cup. Weigh it if you can: somewhere in the region of 380-400 g total, depending how the flour is scooped.
- A pint of milk means 20 fl ozA pint of milk means 20 imperial fl oz -- That is about 2 1/2 US cups.
- "Dissolve" the butterNineteenth-century usage for melt. Two ounces is 4 tablespoons, melted into the hot milk, which the recipe then tells you to cool before it meets the yolks, presumably so the hot milk does not cook them.
- The ironThe original presumably assumes a hinged cast-iron waffle iron, heated over the fire or on the range and greased between batches. A modern electric iron works; set it medium-high rather than maximum.
- DonenessSteam stops escaping from the sides when the waffle is set, usually 3 to 4 minutes. Without soda these brown less readily, so judge by crispness and steam rather than colour alone.
- Yield and servingThe quantity will make a good number of waffles, though it depends entirely on the iron. Butter and sifted sugar, sometimes cinnamon sugar, are common period accompaniments.
The title is the useful part: by the time Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery was compiled in the late nineteenth century, household waffle batters were commonly raised either with brewer's or German yeast, which needed hours of proving, or with soda and an acid such as sour milk or cream of tartar. A version leaning only on whipped egg whites was the quick alternative for cooks who had neither a yeast sponge going nor faith in soda, which was easy to over-measure and left a soapy taste. The waffle itself is much older than any of these leavenings: the hinged patterned iron descends from the medieval wafer irons used for thin communion-style wafers, and the deep-gridded form is generally traced through the Low Countries, reaching British and American kitchens as a breakfast and supper dish cooked to order at the fire.