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Waffles (C sifted flour T sugar if)
2 1/4 C sifted flour 1 T sugar, if desired 3 level t baking powder ½ C milk 1/2 level t salt Sift all together twice Mix liquid ingredients and combine the two mixtures. Fry on hot iron until brown and serve with maple syrup. 2 T melted butter 2 eggs, beaten separately 2 C fiour 4 t baking powder Blanche Petrie.
A plain baking-powder waffle of the church-supper type: no yeast, no resting, mixed and cooked at once. The ingredient list runs together in the original, so read it through before you start.
- The flour quantityThe opening "24 C sifted flour" is not a workable amount; with 1½ cups of milk and 2 eggs the batter wants roughly 2 to 2¼ cups of flour. Measure by sifting first, then spooning into the cup, which gives about 4 oz per cup.
- Duplicate leavening lineFlour and baking powder each appear twice in the list, at slightly different amounts. Use one set only — about 2 cups flour to 3 or 4 level teaspoons baking powder — and do not add both.
- Eggs beaten separatelyThis is the hinge of the recipe. Yolks go into the milk and melted butter; whites are whipped to soft peaks and folded in last, which is what makes the waffle light rather than pancake-dense. Fold gently and cook straight away, before the foam collapses.
- Sifting twiceFlour and baking powder of the period clumped more than their modern equivalents, which is the likeliest reason for the double sift. One sift or a thorough whisk will do now, but do combine the dry ingredients before the liquid goes in so the leavening is evenly distributed.
- "Hot iron"The recipe assumes the iron is thoroughly heated before the batter goes in; the text does not say whether it is a stovetop or an electric model. An electric iron on a medium-high setting will do; grease it once at the start if it is not non-stick.
- Cooking timeThree to five minutes per waffle, until the steam coming off the iron thins out noticeably. Lifting the lid early tears the waffle in half.
- YieldAbout 6 to 8 waffles in a standard round iron, serving 3 or 4. The batter does not hold well; cook it all and keep finished waffles in a 200F oven on a rack rather than stacked.
Baking-powder waffles like this one mark a break from the older tradition, in which waffle batter was raised with yeast and left overnight — a practice that persisted in American cookbooks well into the nineteenth century. Chemical leavening, widely available and reliable by the later nineteenth century, turned the waffle into a same-morning proposition, and the separately beaten egg white did some of the work the long ferment used to do. Contributed community-cookbook formulas are typically this short: a name at the bottom, no instructions the contributor thought obvious, and an assumption that the reader already owns the iron.