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Wafers (Ounces butter ounces sugar)
4 ounces butter. 4 ounces sugar. 5 ounces flour. 4 eggs. 1 glass of wine. A little mace and nutmeg.--Mrs. Dr. J.
Wafers. 4 spoonfuls flour. 4 spoonfuls sugar. 4 spoonfuls cream. 1 spoonful butter. Orange peel, mace, and nutmeg.
Prepare as for pound cake. Bake in wafer irons, rolling them while hot.
Two versions of the same thing sit together here, the first a batter given only as a list of weights, the second a small cream-based batter with the terse direction "prepare as for pound cake." Both are stovetop wafers, baked between the plates of a hinged iron rather than in an oven.
- The hinge: roll them the instant they leave the ironA wafer is pliable for about five seconds and brittle thereafter. Lift it off, wrap it round a wooden spoon handle or a cone form at once, and hold for a moment until it sets. Any that cool flat can be returned to the closed iron for a few seconds to soften again.
- Weights to volume4 oz butter is one stick (113 g), 4 oz sugar is a scant 2/3 cup, 5 oz flour is a generous cup. Weighing is easier than converting and the ratio is the whole recipe.
- "1 glass of wine"A wine glass in nineteenth-century American receipts is conventionally reckoned at about 2 fl oz, not the 6 oz a modern glass holds. Sherry or Madeira suits the mace and nutmeg. The quantity is genuinely imprecise; start with 2 oz and judge by the batter, which should pour thickly.
- "4 spoonfuls" in the second versionUnqualified spoonfuls in receipts of this period are usually taken as tablespoons. That would yield a very small batch, perhaps a dozen wafers, and the batter should be thin enough to spread when the iron is closed.
- "Prepare as for pound cake"Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs one at a time, then fold in the flour and flavourings. The second recipe has no eggs at all, so cream the butter and sugar, add the cream, then the flour: it will be a batter, not a dough.
- Wafer irons and what to use insteadThe long-handled iron was heated over coals, both plates greased, and turned once. A modern pizzelle iron does the same job; a heavy nonstick skillet will take thin spread rounds, baked about 90 seconds a side, though the surface will be plain rather than patterned. If you use an oven instead, spread thin circles on parchment and bake at 375F for 5 to 7 minutes, until the edges brown.
- Orange peelFresh zest, finely grated, not candied peel, which will not disperse in so thin a batter. Half an orange is enough for the small quantity given.
- Yield and keepingThe first recipe makes roughly two to three dozen wafers depending on how thinly you spread them. They go soft in humid air within hours; store airtight with a desiccant or crisp them briefly in a low oven before serving.
Rolled wafers baked in long-handled irons are among the oldest surviving European confections, descended from the medieval wafer trade and from the ecclesiastical wafer irons of the same tradition; in Virginia they persisted as a genteel accompaniment to wine, tea, ice cream and syllabub well into the nineteenth century. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housewives, which is why two unreconciled wafer receipts appear one after another with a contributor's name attached: the book preserves each woman's household shorthand rather than standardising it. The abbreviation is itself the point of interest, since "prepare as for pound cake" and "4 spoonfuls" assume a reader who had learned the method at someone's elbow and needed only the proportions jogged.