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Waffles (Tsp salt tsp soda eggs)
1/4 tsp. salt 1/2 tsp. soda 2 eggs
— Mrs. Hiram B. Gibbs
2½ cups milk, 3 cups flour, 3 eggs (whites and yolks beaten separately), 2 tsp. Royal baking powder, 1/2 tsp. salt, 2 tbsp. melted butter. Beat whites of eggs very stiff and add with melted butter last. (If batter is too stiff, thin with milk). Pour on hot greased waffle irons. Cook about one minute, turn. Repeat if necessary until waffles are delicate brown. Serve at once with maple syrup.
A plain stovetop waffle batter from a church-class fundraiser book, with the usual community-cookbook typesetting mishaps. Read past the first line before you start.
- The stray first line"1/4 tsp. salt 1/2 tsp. soda 2 eggs" is the tail of the preceding recipe, orphaned by the compositor. The actual recipe begins at "2 1/2 cups milk" and lists its own salt, eggs and leavening.
- Beaten whites are the hingeThe lift here comes mostly from the whites, not the 2 teaspoons of baking powder, which is low for 3 cups of flour. Beat them until they hold a firm peak and fold them in with the butter at the very end, then use the batter promptly rather than letting it stand.
- Royal baking powderRoyal in this era was a cream-of-tartar powder, single-acting rather than the double-acting kind; the brand still exists but the formulation is not the same. Any modern double-acting powder substitutes measure for measure. With a single-acting or elderly powder, get the waffles onto the iron immediately.
- "Turn" means a stovetop ironThe instruction to cook a minute and flip belongs to a hinged cast-iron waffle iron set over a burner and rotated to cook the second side. In a closed electric iron, give it 3 to 5 minutes, until the steam slows and the waffle releases.
- GreasingThe recipe assumes a greased iron. Brush a bare cast-iron iron with oil before every waffle; a modern nonstick iron needs nothing.
- Batter consistencyThree cups flour to 2 1/2 cups milk gives a thick batter, thicker than most current recipes. The note to thin with milk is worth taking — aim for something that pours in a slow ribbon.
- YieldRoughly eight to ten waffles in a standard square iron, though the recipe gives no yield; enough for about four people. Hold finished waffles in a single layer on a rack in a 200F oven; stacking steams them soft.
Philathea cook books were produced by Philathea classes, the young women's wing of the Baraca–Philathea Bible class movement that spread through American Protestant churches in the first decades of the twentieth century, and like most such books it is a collection of signed contributions sold to raise money for the class. Waffles belonged to the griddle-and-iron tradition of American breakfast cookery; the brand-name call for Royal baking powder places the recipe in the era when baking powder companies were among the most aggressive advertisers in the country and cooks named the tin as readily as the ingredient. The recipe closes with the direction to serve at once with maple syrup.