Rice Waffles
1 pint of flour. 1 pint of new milk. The yolks of three eggs. Lump of butter the size of an egg. Half teacup of boiled rice. A pinch of salt and a pinch of soda, sprinkled in the flour and sifted with it. Beat well.--Mrs. F. Another Recipe for the Same.
Two gills of rice, mixed with three ounces of butter, three eggs, three gills of flour, a little salt, and cream enough to make the batter. Beat till very light.--Mrs. Dr. S.
Two versions of the same idea, both built on leftover boiled rice. The measurements are by volume in period vessels, so the first job is translating the pints, gills and teacups.
- Pints and gillsA pint of flour is 2 cups (about 8-9 oz); a pint of milk is 2 cups. A gill is half a cup, so the second recipe wants 1 cup of cooked rice and 1 1/2 cups of flour. A teacup was not a standardised measure -- period sources put it at anywhere from 4 to 6 fl oz -- so half a teacup of rice is somewhere around 1/4 to 1/3 cup.
- Lump of butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. Melt it and let it cool slightly before it goes into the batter so it does not seize against cold milk.
- New milkMilk fresh from the cow, unskimmed and unsoured. Whole milk is the direct substitute. The second recipe's "cream enough to make the batter" means half-and-half or light cream added until it pours thickly, probably 1 to 1 1/2 cups.
- The pinch of sodaSoda needs an acid to work on, and sweet new milk supplies almost none. The lift here comes mainly from the beaten eggs and the steam of the iron; the soda is doing little more than browning the crust. Buttermilk in place of the milk would give the soda something to react with.
- Yolks only, in the first versionMrs. F. calls for three yolks and says nothing about the whites. Some period recipes whipped the whites and folded them in at the end, though others calling for yolks used the yolks alone. Beating the whites separately and folding them in last would make the batter lighter for filling the iron's ridges.
- The ricePlain boiled long-grain rice, cooked soft and cooled. Break up any clumps with a fork or the waffles will have dense pockets. Cooked rice is the whole point of the recipe -- it keeps the interior moist and slightly chewy where a plain waffle would be dry.
- Beating and resting"Beat till very light" was done by hand for several minutes. A whisk or mixer gets there in one or two. Let the batter stand ten minutes so the flour hydrates; rice batters thicken noticeably as they sit, and you may need a splash more milk before the last waffles.
- The ironThese were cast-iron waffle irons on long handles, heated in the fire and turned. A modern electric iron at medium-high does the same job, but grease it well each time -- rice batters stick more than plain ones.
- YieldEither batter makes roughly 8 to 10 waffles in a standard iron, enough for four people. The recipe gives no serving direction; butter and syrup would be the usual accompaniment.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1879, is a collection of contributions from named Virginia housekeepers, which is why two versions of rice waffles sit side by side over the initials of two different women. Rice in a Southern breakfast batter was thrift rather than novelty: rice was a staple of the Atlantic coast trade and a pot of it was often left from the day before, and cooks worked it into waffles, griddle cakes, muffins and bread rather than throw it out. The technique of stretching wheat flour with a cooked grain was standard across nineteenth-century American cookery, and it survives in the rice and grits breads still made along the Carolina and Georgia coast. The waffle iron itself was a hearth tool -- two hinged plates on long handles, heated in the coals and flipped midway -- which is why so many recipes of the period stress beating the batter until it is very light.