Waffles
2¼ cups sifted pastry flour 1 tablespoon of sugar 2 tablespoons of melted butter 2 eggs, beaten separately add 3 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1½ cups milk Sift flour, then measure, add baking powder, salt and sugar, sift three times, add well beaten eggs and milk, melted butter and beat hard. Fry on a hot, well greased waffle iron, serve with maple syrup.
A plain, sweet-leaning waffle batter from a baking powder company's promotional booklet. The numbers have lost their fractions in transcription, and one instruction in the ingredient list contradicts the method.
- The garbled fractions"21/4 cups" is 2¼ cups flour and "11/2 cups" is 1½ cups milk. Read as written they would give a batter far too stiff, then far too thin.
- Eggs beaten separatelyThe ingredient list says to beat the eggs separately — yolks and whites in different bowls — but the method then says "add well beaten eggs." Beat the whites to soft peaks, stir the yolks into the batter with the milk, and fold the whites in last for a lighter waffle.
- "Beat hard" is not for the whitesBeat the batter hard before the whites go in, not after. Once folded, stop; overworking collapses the foam that this recipe relies on for lift.
- Pastry flourPastry flour is softer and lower in protein than all-purpose. Substitute all-purpose with about a tablespoon per cup replaced by cornstarch, or simply use all-purpose and accept a slightly chewier waffle.
- Calumet baking powderCalumet was sold as a double-acting powder, historically an alum-phosphate blend, and is still a double-acting powder today; any modern double-acting baking powder measures the same. Three level teaspoons for 2¼ cups flour is a little generous by current practice and will give a noticeably open, quick-rising waffle.
- Sift three timesWorth doing here. The recipe carries a lot of leavening and no other means of distributing it, and pastry flour packs. Sifting after measuring, as instructed, also lightens the flour.
- "Well greased waffle iron"Written for a cast-iron stovetop iron that needed brushing with fat each time. A modern nonstick electric iron needs a light greasing for the first waffle only; grease every round and the surface will smoke and gum.
- YieldAbout six to eight waffles depending on iron size — four generous servings.
"Reliable Recipes" was a booklet issued by the Calumet Baking Powder Company of Chicago, one of dozens of branded cookbooks that flooded American kitchens in the early twentieth century; the recipes were practical, and the brand name recurs through the ingredient lists. Waffles reached America largely through Dutch settlement — the word comes from the Dutch wafel — and for much of the nineteenth century they were made in long-handled hinged irons held over coals or set into a stove opening. Chemical leavening turned what had been a yeast-raised batter needing hours of proof into something that could be mixed and cooked quickly.