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Orange Waffles
3 cups flour 3 teaspoons baking powder 2 cups milk 1 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons sugar 3 egg yolks 3 tablespoons grated orange rind 1/4 cup melted butter 3 egg whites Sift dry ingredients, add orange rind, milk, beaten egg yolks, melted butter, then fold in beaten egg whites. Bake in waffle iron at table if electric iron is available. Serve with syrup or orange marmalade. Waffles should be eaten as soon as made, the hotter the better.
A straightforward leavened waffle batter with the whites folded in separately; the only unusual element is the sheer volume of orange zest. Everything here translates directly to a modern electric iron.
- Fold, don't stirThe lift comes from the beaten whites as much as the baking powder. Beat them to soft peaks and fold in with a few strokes, leaving the batter visibly streaky rather than smooth.
- Three tablespoons of rindThat is the zest of roughly two to three oranges, and it is deliberate — this is meant to taste strongly of orange. Take only the coloured layer; any white pith turns the waffles bitter.
- Iron temperatureA modern electric iron on medium-high, around 375-400F, suits this batter. Test with a spoonful: it should sizzle on contact and stop steaming after three to four minutes, which is the real doneness signal.
- Butter the grids anywayA quarter cup of melted butter in three cups of flour is on the lean side for a non-stick release. Brush the plates before the first waffle even if the iron claims to need no greasing.
- Batter consistencyTwo cups of milk to three cups of flour gives a thick, pourable batter. If it mounds rather than spreads when ladled, slacken it with a tablespoon or two more milk so it reaches the edges of the grids before the surface sets.
- Rest is unnecessaryOnce the whites are in, bake immediately. Standing lets the foam collapse and the baking powder spend itself in the bowl.
- YieldAbout eight round waffles from a standard iron, serving four to six at a supper alongside other dishes.
- ServingThe recipe offers table cooking as an option, conditional on having an electric iron. If you are cooking ahead instead, hold the finished waffles in a single layer on a rack in a 200F oven — stacked on a plate they steam themselves soft within a minute.
Waffles were an early beneficiary of domestic electricity: tabletop electric waffle irons appeared in American kitchens from the 1910s and spread over the following decades, turning a hearth-and-stovetop job into a piece of dining-room theatre. The recipe's qualifier — 'if electric iron is available' — shows such irons were still not something every household had. The Sunday night supper, when the household ate something informal and often egg- or griddle-based, was a long-standing habit rather than an invention of the interwar years. Citrus was by this period arriving by rail from Florida and California in quantity, which may be why three tablespoons of zest reads here as unremarkable rather than extravagant.