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Virginia Waffles
1 1/2 cups boiling water 1/2 cup white corn meal 1 1/2 cups milk 3 cups flour 3 tablespoons sugar 1 1/4 tablespoons baking powder 1 1/2 teaspoons salt Yolks 2 eggs Whites 2 eggs 2 tablespoons melted butter Cook meal in boiling water twenty minutes; add milk, dry ingredients mixed and sifted, yolks of eggs well beaten, butter, and whites of eggs beaten stiff. Cook same as Waffles.
A cornmeal mush forms the base of this batter, which gives Virginia waffles their crisp shell and tender interior. The batter is thick and needs to be handled gently once the whites go in.
- Cook the mush firstStir the white cornmeal into the boiling water and cook it 20 minutes over low heat, or in a double boiler, until it is a smooth thick porridge. This is the step that matters most: undercooked meal stays gritty and will not soften later in the waffle iron.
- Cool before the eggs go inAdding the milk brings the mush down considerably, but check that it is no more than warm before the beaten yolks are stirred in, or they will curdle.
- White corn mealThe recipe calls for white cornmeal, which was the usual choice in Southern cooking. Yellow can be substituted; some cooks find the flavour more assertive.
- The odd baking powder measure1 1/4 tablespoons is about 3 3/4 teaspoons. That is a generous amount by modern standards; 1 tablespoon of today's double-acting powder should be enough.
- Batter consistencyThree cups of flour and half a cup of meal against three cups of liquid makes a thick batter. If it will not pour from a ladle, a little extra milk will loosen it.
- Folding the whitesFold the stiff whites in last, in two additions, and stop while streaks are still visible. They are the only lift beyond the baking powder in a batter this heavy.
- "Cook same as Waffles"The recipe defers to the book's basic waffle method: a hot, well-greased iron, cooked until the steam slows and the shell is firm. Cornmeal batters can colour faster than plain wheat ones, so check the first waffle early.
- YieldRoughly eight to ten waffles in a standard iron, depending on its size. The batter thickens as it stands.
Cornmeal in a wheat batter is a familiar feature of Southern breadmaking, where corn was the older and cheaper grain and remained widely used long after white flour became available. Cooking the meal to a mush before mixing, rather than adding it dry, is the same technique behind spoonbread and batter bread, and it does the same work here: fully hydrated meal contributes moisture without grittiness. Waffle irons were long-handled hinged plates held over coals before the stovetop and electric models of the early twentieth century, and "Virginia" attached to a waffle or a batter bread in a general American cookbook of this era functioned largely as a regional signal rather than pointing to any one documented recipe.