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One-Egg Waffles
1½ cups flour. 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt Mix the dry ingredients; add the milk slowly; then the egg, well beaten, and the melted butter. Beat the batter for several 1¾ cups milk 1 egg 2 tablespoons melted butter minutes; drop by spoonfuls on a hot buttered waffle iron, putting one tablespoonful in each section of the iron. Bake and turn, browning both sides carefully; remove from the iron; pile one on top the other and serve at once. 2 cups flour
A lean, thrifty waffle batter — one egg and only two tablespoons of fat for two cups of flour — that behaves more like a thick pancake batter than the rich waffles most people expect. Assembled in full, the ingredients are 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 3/4 cups milk, 1 egg, and 2 tablespoons melted butter.
- Mix in this orderWhisk the flour, baking powder and salt together, then add the milk gradually so no lumps form, and only then the beaten egg and melted butter. Adding the butter last keeps it from seizing into flecks against cold milk.
- Do not beat for several minutesThe instruction to beat the batter hard is typical of cookbooks of this period. With modern all-purpose flour and double-acting baking powder, a minute of stirring is generally enough; prolonged beating can develop gluten and toughen the waffle.
- Rest before bakingTen minutes standing lets the flour hydrate and the baking powder begin working. The batter will thicken slightly and pour more evenly.
- Iron temperatureA modern electric iron on medium-high, or a stovetop iron heated until a drop of water skitters, is what "hot" means here. Butter or oil the plates before the first waffle even on nonstick — this batter has little fat of its own to release it.
- Quantity per sectionOne tablespoon per section suits the shallow irons this recipe assumes. Deep Belgian irons need considerably more; fill to about two-thirds of each well and let the lid close the gap.
- Turning"Bake and turn" belongs to the hinged stovetop iron, which is flipped partway through so both faces cook against hot metal. An electric iron does this for itself; leave the lid shut until the steam thins, roughly 3 to 5 minutes.
- Serving and yieldYield depends entirely on the iron; at the recipe's own rate of one tablespoon per section this batter goes a long way. Piling them up, as directed, traps steam and softens the crust — for crisp results hold them in a single layer on a rack in a 200F oven until all are done.
One-egg recipes are a signature of early twentieth-century American cookbooks, written for households where eggs were counted and butter was measured in tablespoons rather than sticks. Waffle irons of the period were commonly, though not universally, long-handled hinged cast iron, set over a stove hole and turned by hand, which is why the instruction to "bake and turn, browning both sides carefully" is spelled out — the cook, not the appliance, controlled both faces.