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Raised Waffles
At night mix together one pint of lukewarm milk in which two tablespoonfuls of butter have been melted, two tablespoonfuls of liquid yeast, or half a small cake of compressed yeast dissolved in one gill of water, two well-beaten eggs, one teaspoonful of salt, and about one pound of flour. When this batter is thoroughly mixed, cover it, and stand it over night in a warm place. In the morning, heat a waffle-iron, butter it, put in the batter without stirring it down, and then bake the waffles. Serve with butter and powdered sugar.
An overnight yeast-risen waffle batter, mixed at night and baked at breakfast. Nothing here is unsafe; the only real hazards are killing the yeast with hot milk and deflating the batter in the morning.
- Do not stir the batter downThe instruction to ladle it in "without stirring it down" is the whole point of the method. The overnight fermentation fills the batter with gas; folding it out gives you a flat, dense waffle instead of the open, lacy crumb this recipe is after.
- Lukewarm means about 100-110FMelt the butter into the milk, then let it cool to blood temperature before the yeast goes anywhere near it. Milk that feels barely warm on the wrist is right; milk that feels properly hot risks damaging the yeast.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. Here it is only the water for dissolving the yeast.
- Compressed yeast and "liquid yeast"Compressed (fresh) yeast came in small cakes; half a small cake is roughly equivalent to about 1 teaspoon of modern active dry or instant yeast. "Liquid yeast" was a homemade barm, often raised on hops and potato, and has no direct commercial equivalent today.
- One pound of flourAbout 3 1/2 cups of all-purpose. The batter should pour thickly, like heavy pancake batter; hold back a few tablespoons of the flour if it looks stiff.
- "A warm place" overnightAn ordinary modern kitchen at 68-72F is warm enough for 8 to 12 hours. If your kitchen sits above 78F, give it two hours out and then the refrigerator, and let it come back to room temperature in the morning.
- The ironThe iron meant here would have been a hinged cast-iron one set over a burner and turned partway through. An electric iron on medium-high does the same job in 3 to 4 minutes; grease it the first time only, as the butter in the batter handles the rest.
- YieldRoughly six to eight waffles, depending on iron size, or four modest servings.
Yeast-raised waffles predate baking powder by centuries: before chemical leaveners were cheap and reliable, a batter that had to rise did so overnight on barm or a piece of bread dough, and the waffle iron itself goes back to medieval wafer irons pressed with heraldic patterns. By the time Oscar Tschirky was overseeing breakfast at the Waldorf, the quicker baking-powder waffle was also in circulation, which is why the "raised" version is worth naming separately here ",