Waffles
Sift together 1 1/2 cups pastry flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon sugar 1/2 1/2 teaspoon soda; add slowly 1 1/4 cups sour cream or rich sour milk or a mixture of the two, and 3 egg yolks, well beaten. Fold in 3 egg whites, beaten stiff. Use 1 large spoonful of mixture for each waffle. Cook on hot waffle iron. An aluminum electric waffle iron should not be greased. An iron one should be well greased.
A soda-and-sour-cream batter that needs no leavening beyond the acid in the dairy and the air in the whites. The one thing to get right is speed: once the soda meets the sour cream, the batter starts spending its lift.
- Sour cream or sour milkSour milk here meant raw milk left to acidify, not spoiled pasteurised milk; the usual modern stand-in is buttermilk. For the recipe's other option, sour cream, full-fat cultured sour cream thinned with buttermilk to a pourable batter works.
- Pastry flourSofter and lower in protein than all-purpose. Lacking it, swapping a tablespoon or so of cornstarch for flour per cup moves in the right direction (a full 1/4 cup of cornstarch lands nearer cake flour); straight all-purpose gives a chewier, breadier waffle.
- Soda needs acidThe 1/2 teaspoon soda is there to react with the sour dairy. Substituting sweet milk or cream leaves the soda unneutralized, which tastes soapy and browns the waffle unpleasantly fast.
- Mix late, cook at onceFold the whites in only when the iron is hot and ready. Much of the carbon dioxide from soda and sour dairy is given off soon after mixing, and batter left standing is likely to bake flatter.
- Greasing the ironThe instruction still holds. A cast-iron waffle iron wants a thin brushing of fat before each of the first few waffles; a modern nonstick electric iron needs none, and oil on it will eventually gum and smoke.
- Iron temperatureThe recipe gives no setting or time. Judge by steam: cook until the vigorous steaming from the seam slows and nearly stops, rather than by a timer.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield, and the count depends on the iron. "1 large spoonful" means a serving spoon, not a teaspoon; use enough batter to reach within about half an inch of the grid edges.
Waffles belonged to the informal meal rather than to dinner: quick to cook in batches, served hot off the iron with syrup, honey or creamed chicken, and requiring whoever cooked to stay within reach of the iron. The sour-cream version reflects a dairy economy in which milk soured predictably into something useful and soda or saleratus was kept to sweeten it. The reference to "an aluminum electric waffle iron" points to a date no earlier than the electric iron's spread: electric waffle irons appeared in the 1910s and became common in middle-class households through the 1920s and 1930s, and cookbooks of that period often gave separate instructions for the new appliance and the older stovetop iron.