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Waffles
Take a tea-cupful of fresh butter, put it into a large bowl, and beat it to cream. Add three cupfuls of sugar, a pinch of salt, half a nutmeg, grated, a few drops of essence of lemon, three well-beaten eggs, half a tea-spoonful of baking-powder dissolved in a tea-spoonful of milk, and as much flour as will make a thick batter. Beat the mixture thoroughly. Heat the waffle-irons, rub them over with butter, and put into them one or two large spoonfuls of the mixture. Be careful to leave room for rising; close them, and put them over hot coals. Let them remain for six or eight minutes, then turn them over, and leave them a few minutes longer: if on opening them the cake is nicely browned, and will leave the irons easily, it is done enough, Probable cost, 1s. 6d. for this quantity.
This is a stiff, very sweet batter closer to a wafer biscuit than a modern breakfast waffle, and it behaves differently in the iron.
- A tea-cupfulA Victorian teacup is usually reckoned at 5 to 6 fl oz, so read the butter as roughly 3/4 cup (about 170 g). The recipe switches to plain "cupfuls" for the sugar; if the same cup is meant, the sugar-to-fat ratio is closer to a cookie dough than a batter.
- The sugar will burn before the middle setsWith this much sugar and very little liquid beyond the three eggs and a teaspoonful of milk, the surface caramelises fast. On an electric iron use a medium setting rather than high, and judge by colour and release, not by the indicator light.
- Judge by releaseThe original test is the reliable one: when the cake browns and lifts cleanly from the plates it is done. A sugar-heavy batter sticks hard while underbaked and lets go the moment it is cooked through.
- Half a nutmegGrated whole, half a nutmeg yields roughly a rounded teaspoon, which is assertive by modern taste. Half that suits most palates, and pre-ground nutmeg is weaker still.
- Essence of lemonThis is lemon extract, an oil-based flavouring, not lemon juice. A few drops is literal; a quarter teaspoon of modern extract is ample, or use the grated zest of a lemon.
- Baking powderHalf a teaspoon dissolved in a teaspoon of milk is a small amount for this volume of batter. Expect a dense, crisp result rather than a fluffy one; a fuller teaspoon of modern double-acting powder will lift it more.
- "As much flour as will make a thick batter"Add flour gradually until the mixture drops heavily from the spoon rather than pouring. The quantity is not stated and will vary with the eggs and butter, so the visual cue is what governs.
- Irons over coalsThe original iron is a long-handled hinged pair heated on the fire and turned so both faces cook. On an electric iron there is nothing to turn, and four to six minutes total is nearer the mark than the six to eight minutes plus a few minutes more given here.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. They are sweet enough to serve as a biscuit with coffee rather than with syrup.
The name comes from Dutch wafel, with Old French gaufre a cognate from the same Frankish root, generally traced to a sense of honeycomb, after the cell pattern the irons press into the batter. Hinged waffle irons were kitchen and hearth equipment across northern Europe for centuries before the cast-iron stove-top versions of the nineteenth century, and the long handles in the older pattern exist because the plates had to be held over open coals and flipped. What is striking about this Cassell's version is how sweet and how dry it is: three parts sugar to one of butter, spiced with nutmeg and lemon, with almost no milk. That places it with the wafer and the gaufrette, a sweetmeat eaten by hand, rather than with the leavened breakfast waffle that came to dominate in America. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, an omnibus of the late Victorian household kitchen, prints costs alongside its recipes, and the 1s. 6d. noted here is a reminder that sugar and butter in that quantity still counted as a real outlay.