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Hominy Waffles
To 1 cupful of boiled hominy freed from lumps add 1 pint of milk which has been scalded and cooled, 1 tablespoonful of butter, 1/2 of a teaspoonful of salt, 1 tablespoonful of sugar, 1 pint of flour and 1/3 of a cake of compressed yeast dissolved in a little warm water. Beat well, cover and let raise over night. In the morning add 2 eggs, the whites and yolks beaten separately, and bake in hot, well-greased waffle irons.
An overnight yeast-raised waffle batter, thickened with cooked hominy rather than extra flour. Nothing here is difficult, but three things in the original need translating: the hominy, the yeast cake, and the iron.
- What hominy means hereHulled corn kernels treated with alkali, boiled soft — the same thing sold today as whole hominy in cans, or cooked from dried. "Boiled hominy freed from lumps" means mash or press it smooth; cooked grits, cooled, do the same job and are the easier substitute.
- The yeast cakeA cake of compressed (fresh) yeast in this period was commonly around 0.6 oz, though cake sizes varied; a third of one is roughly 5 to 6 g of fresh yeast, or about 3/4 teaspoon of active dry or instant yeast — a fraction of a modern packet. The small quantity suits the slow overnight rise the recipe calls for rather than a fast one.
- Measure by volume, not weightA pint of flour means two cups, roughly 8 to 10 oz depending on how it is measured. A pint of milk is two cups. The batter should pour thickly, like heavy pancake batter; hominy varies in wetness, so hold back a little milk and adjust.
- Why the milk is scaldedScalding was standard practice with raw milk and it deactivates whey proteins that slacken a yeast dough. With pasteurised milk it is optional, but the milk must be cooled to lukewarm before it meets the yeast.
- The overnight riseSet the covered bowl somewhere cool — 65 to 68F is right. In a warm modern kitchen the batter will over-ferment and turn sour and thin by morning; the refrigerator is a safer place for it if the room is above 70F.
- The eggs in the morningYolks stirred in, whites beaten to soft peaks and folded through last. Fold gently and bake straight away; the whites are what keeps the waffle light against the weight of the hominy.
- Irons and heatThese were stovetop cast-iron waffle irons, greased and heated over the flame on both sides. An electric iron at a medium-high setting, roughly 375 to 400F, is a reasonable modern equivalent. Check the first waffle early.
- YieldEnough for about eight standard waffles, serving four.
Hominy — corn hulled by soaking in alkali, a technique inherited from Indigenous cooks in the Americas — was cheap, filling, and a staple of Southern and Midwestern kitchens well into the twentieth century, which is why it turns up in recipes stretching a pint of flour to feed a family. Overnight yeast-raised waffles like these were the older form; chemically leavened batters mixed at the last minute only displaced them gradually as baking powder became reliable and cheap. The practical logic is that yesterday's leftover boiled hominy or grits becomes the body of today's breakfast. Compressed yeast sold in cakes was one of the household leavens of the era, distributed fresh and perishable, and recipes routinely called for a half or a third of a cake in the way we now call for part of a packet.