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Old Fashioned Waffles
134 CUPS SIFTED FLOUR 3 TEASPOONS BAKING POWDER 1/2 TEASPOON SALT 1 I TABLESPOON SUGAR 2 EGGS, SEPARATED 2 TABLESPOONS MELTED BUTTER I 11/4 CUPS MILK Sift dry ingredients together. Mix beaten egg yolks with milk. Combine mixtures , add butter, and fold in stiffly beaten egg whites.
If you can pick up an old-fashioned cast iron waffle iron in a junk shop or retrieve your grandmother's, it will make quite a lot of gaiety in a permanent camp where there is hearth fire cooking, and it will work equally well over any steady heat. It must be well greased, however. Hence there is less butter in the above recipe than would be required for the electric waffle-baker, just as the fat must be reduced in ready-mix recipe if you are using one of the Aunt Jemimas for your old-fashioned waffles.
A plain baking-powder waffle batter written for a hinged cast-iron iron set over coals rather than an electric baker. The proportions work in either, with one adjustment the author flags.
- Flour quantityThe flour figure has lost its fraction in printing. A batter with 3 teaspoons baking powder, 2 eggs and 1 1/4 cups milk points to 1 3/4 cups sifted flour, which gives a pourable batter that mounds slightly on the spoon.
- Sugar and milkRead the stray strokes as 1 tablespoon sugar and 1 1/4 cups milk. Both are consistent with the rest of the ratios.
- Why so little butterTwo tablespoons is deliberately low because a cast-iron iron is greased before every waffle. The author says as much: this batter carries less butter than an electric waffle-baker would require, so if you are using an electric iron expect to add more melted butter than the two tablespoons given here.
- Seasoning the ironA junk-shop iron needs scouring, drying over heat, and two or three coats of oil baked on before use. An unseasoned iron will stick badly however much grease you add.
- Heat over a fireBring the closed iron up to temperature before the first pour: a drop of water should skitter and vanish. Cook over steady coals rather than flame, and turn the iron once, roughly halfway, so both plates get equal heat.
- TimingThree to five minutes a waffle over coals. Judge by steam, not the clock; when the heavy plume slows to a wisp, the waffle is set. Opening early tears it in half.
- Folding the whitesFold the beaten whites in last and stop while streaks are still visible. Batter mixed smooth loses the lift that makes these worth the trouble.
- YieldAbout four to six waffles depending on iron size, which is two to three servings. Batter does not hold well once the whites are in, so bake it straight through.
- Ready-mix noteThe author's aside still applies to any boxed pancake or waffle mix: reduce the added fat when baking in a heavily greased iron.
Hinged cast-iron waffle irons with long handles were standard hearth equipment in American kitchens through the nineteenth century, worked directly in the coals and turned by hand; the spread of the electric waffle baker in the 1920s and 30s pushed them into attics and secondhand shops, which is exactly where this author expects a camp cook to find one. The recipe belongs to a strain of outdoor-cooking writing that treated a permanent camp as a place to revive hearth technique for pleasure rather than necessity. The passing reference to "one of the Aunt Jemimas" places the passage in an era when boxed pancake mix was common enough to serve as shorthand.