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Waffles, Rice
Boil half a pint of rice till soft; put it into a bowl, and add very gradually three-quarters of a pound of flour, half a tea-spoonful of salt, a pint and a quarter of milk, and the well-beaten yolks of two eggs. Beat the mixture thoroughly. Whisk the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, add them to the batter, and beat it again. Take a small quantity of this mixture, and pour it backwards and forwards from one cup to another from a good height for a few minutes; then bake immediately.
WALES?, PRINCE OF, SAUCE FOR SALADS AND BROILED FISH. Take a small handful of burnet, chervil, chives, and tarragon-leaves, throw them into boiling water, and boil them for a few minutes; then put them into the corner of a napkin, and press the moisture thoroughly from them. Put the pulp into a mortar with two anchovies filleted, two hard-boiled yolks of eggs, a dessert-spoonful of capers, a dessert-spoonful of unmixed mustard, and the yolk of a raw egg. Pound these ingredients to a smooth paste, then add (first by drops, and afterwards by teaspoonfuls) a quarter of a pint of Lucca oil, beating the sauce well between every addition. Add last of all and very gradually about two table-spoonfuls of tarragon vinegar; rub the sauce through a hair sieve to make it smooth, and it will be ready. Time, about three-quarters of an hour to prepare the sauce. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
Two recipes have run together in this column: a rice waffle batter and a cold green sauce named for the Prince of Wales. Both are workable, though the waffle batter is unleavened and depends entirely on how you handle the egg whites.
- The hinge: air is the only leaveningThere is no baking powder, soda or yeast here, so the whisked whites and the odd pouring-from-a-height trick are the whole rising mechanism. Fold the whites in with a light hand, pour into a hot iron at once, and do not let the batter stand, or it will bake flatter and denser.
- Imperial measuresCassell's pints are 20 fl oz: half a pint of rice is about 1¼ US cups of raw grain, and a pint and a quarter of milk is roughly 3 US cups. Three-quarters of a pound of flour is about 2¾ cups, spooned and levelled.
- Rice consistency"Boil till soft" means properly soft and slightly sticky, not al dente; short-grain or pudding rice works best. Let it cool before adding it to the flour or the yolks will scramble, and expect to mash out lumps as you beat.
- Iron temperatureA modern electric waffle iron on medium-high, around 375-400F, is a reasonable stand-in; the original gives no temperature. Grease it well each time — an eggy, sugarless batter with cooked starch in it sticks readily.
- Yield and servingThe batter makes roughly ten to twelve standard waffles. Being unsweetened, they take equally well to butter and syrup or to a savoury accompaniment.
- Lucca oilLucca oil is olive oil from Lucca in Tuscany, widely sold as a fine table oil in British kitchens of the period. Use a mild, not markedly peppery, extra-virgin oil; a quarter of an imperial pint is about ½ cup plus 2 tablespoons.
- Burnet and the herb listSalad burnet, chervil and tarragon are all still grown but rarely stocked; chervil and burnet in particular are farmers'-market or garden items. If one is missing, weight the mixture toward tarragon and chervil rather than substituting dried herbs, which will taste of hay.
- Raw yolk in the sauceThe sauce is built like a mayonnaise on one raw yolk and is not cooked. Use pasteurised eggs if serving anyone elderly, pregnant or immunocompromised, and keep it refrigerated; it is at its best the day it is made.
- Equipment shortcutA mortar and a hair sieve were the tools available for getting this smooth. A small food processor or immersion blender does the pounding and the oil emulsion in a few minutes, though a final push through a fine sieve still improves the texture.
Rice waffles belong to a broad nineteenth-century family of batters stretched with cooked grain — rice, hominy, oatmeal, leftover porridge — which made a modest amount of wheat flour go further and gave a softer, moister crumb. The trick of pouring batter from cup to cup at a height to beat air into it turns up in period cookery writing for unleavened batters, and reads today as a relic of kitchens that had no reliable chemical raising agents to hand. The sauce that follows is a hollow reminder of Victorian naming habits: dishes were routinely dedicated to royalty, and Prince of Wales sauce was most likely meant to honour the future Edward VII, whose long tenure as heir gave his title to everything from soups to puddings, though the recipe names no one. Its composition — pounded fines herbes, anchovy, hard yolk, capers, mustard, then oil and tarragon vinegar beaten in — puts it squarely in the line of French green sauces that also produced sauce verte and ravigote, and which the English kitchen took up for cold salmon and salads.