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Sour Cream Waffles
Sift together 1¼ cupfuls of flour, ¼ of a teaspoonful of salt and 1/2 of a teaspoonful of baking-soda. Add the beaten yolks of 2 eggs mixed with 1 cupful of thick sour cream, 1 tablespoonful of melted butter and the egg whites whipped to a stiff froth. Have the waffle-iron heated and greased, put 1 tablespoonful of the mixture in each division, close and turn once more until evenly baked on both sides.
A thin, tender waffle batter leavened entirely by soda reacting with sour cream — no baking powder, no yeast. It comes together in five minutes and must go onto the iron promptly.
- Flour quantityThe flour measure has not survived legibly; for one cup of thick sour cream and two eggs, about 1 1/4 cups of flour gives a pourable batter. Judge by consistency — it should ribbon thickly off the spoon, not mound.
- Sour cream then and now"Thick sour cream" here means cream soured naturally, noticeably acidic and heavy. Full-fat commercial sour cream is the closest match; light sour cream or yogurt has less fat and will give a tougher waffle.
- Why the soda alone worksThe acid in the cream is the only thing activating the half teaspoon of soda, so the two should not sit together. Mix and cook promptly; a batter left standing loses its lift.
- Folding the whitesThe whipped whites go in last and should be folded, not stirred, even though the original just says "add." They contribute much of the lift alongside the soda.
- Waffle ironThis was written for a stovetop cast-iron waffle iron that had to be flipped, which is what "turn once more" refers to. An electric iron at medium-high needs no turning; run it until the steam slows, roughly 3 to 4 minutes.
- GreasingCast-iron irons need brushing with oil or clarified butter before each waffle. Non-stick plates do not, and the tablespoon of melted butter in the batter is usually enough.
- Quantity per divisionOne tablespoon per section suits a shallow antique iron. Modern deep-grid Belgian irons take considerably more — fill to about two-thirds of each pocket and let the closing lid spread it.
- YieldThe original gives no yield. From this quantity of batter expect around half a dozen waffles on a standard round iron, serving three or four.
Sour-cream batters belong to a long tradition of thrift baking in which nothing that soured was thrown out. Before refrigeration, cream left to stand turned acidic within a day or two, and cooks learned that this acid, paired with saleratus or baking soda, gave a lift that sweet cream could not. Recipes of this kind cluster in cheap household collections and farm cookbooks because the ingredient was free to anyone keeping a cow, and the resulting waffle is richer than a milk-and-butter version at no extra cost. The instruction to heat and grease the iron and "turn once more" also dates the recipe: the hinged cast-iron waffle iron, set over a stove hole and flipped halfway through, was standard household equipment well into the twentieth century.