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Waffles (Quart of flour quart of sour)
1 quart of flour. 1 quart of sour cream (or buttermilk, if you have no cream). 6 eggs. 1 1/2 teaspoonful of soda. Half a tablespoonful of melted lard, poured in after the batter is mixed. This may be baked as flannel cakes or muffins.--Mrs. H. D.
Another Recipe for Waffles. 1 quart of flour. 6 eggs beaten very light. 1 1/2 pint of new milk. 2 teaspoonfuls of salt. 3 tablespoonfuls of yeast.
Set it to rise at night, and stir with a spoon, in the morning, just before baking. When you want them for tea, make them up in the morning, in winter, or directly after dinner, in summer.--Mrs. Dr. J.
Two waffle batters from the same page: a quick soda batter and an overnight yeast-raised one. Both are built on a quart of flour, which makes far more than a modern household expects.
- A quart of flourMeasured by volume, roughly 4 cups, or about 1 lb 2 oz. Each recipe yields something on the order of 18-24 waffles in a standard iron; halving is sensible for most kitchens.
- Sour cream in 1878This means cream left to clabber naturally, thinner and sharper than the thick cultured sour cream sold today. Thin modern sour cream with milk to a heavy pouring consistency, or take the author's own alternative and use buttermilk.
- Soda needs the acidThe 1 1/2 teaspoons of soda works only against the sour cream or buttermilk. Sweet milk will leave a soapy, yellowish batter. Mix and bake promptly; much of the lift is lost if the batter is left standing.
- No salt in the first batterAn oversight by modern taste. Add about a teaspoon and a half to the soda batter unless the buttermilk is unusually salty.
- Three tablespoons of yeastThis is liquid yeast, home-brewed barm or a hop or potato yeast, not granules. Substitute about 1 teaspoon of instant dry yeast for the whole quart of flour; overnight fermentation needs very little.
- New milkFresh whole milk straight from the cow, unskimmed and unsoured. Whole milk is the modern equivalent.
- The overnight riseA milk-and-yeast batter standing all night in a warm room was normal practice. Refrigerate it instead and let it come to room temperature for half an hour before baking; the flavour develops nearly as well and the milk is not held for hours in the danger zone.
- Stir, do not beat, in the morningThe morning stirring is meant to knock the batter down gently. Beating it out will lose the gas that took all night to build.
- The ironThese were hinged cast-iron waffle irons heated over coals and turned partway through. In an electric iron use a medium-high setting and grease it for the first waffle only; half a tablespoon of lard in a quart of batter is not much fat, so a light film on the plates helps.
- Flannel cakes and muffinsFlannel cakes are soft griddle cakes, cooked on a hot greased griddle like pancakes. Muffins of this period were often baked in rings on a griddle, though muffin tins were also in use by the 1870s.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, gathers recipes credited to named Virginia housekeepers, which is why two versions of the same dish sit side by side under different initials. Waffles were hearth food before they were breakfast food: the long-handled hinged iron was thrust into the coals, and the contributor of the second batter here expects them at the tea table, hence the instruction to mix it in the morning in winter or directly after dinner in summer so it will be ready for the evening. The pairing catches a transition of sorts: one batter leavened by soda reacting with soured dairy, the other still raised by liquid yeast kept alive in the household and measured by the spoonful.