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Quick Waffles
Two pints sweet milk, one cup butter (melted), sifted flour to make a soft batter; add the well-beaten yolks of six eggs, then the beaten whites, and lastly (just before baking) four tea-spoons bakingpowder, beating very hard and fast for a few minutes. These are very good with four or five eggs, but much better with more. -Mrs.
A large, rich, egg-leavened batter written for a cast-iron waffle iron heated over coals. Two things need attention: the scale, and the order of mixing.
- The hinge: don't beat after the whites go inThe instruction to beat "very hard and fast" with the baking powder undoes the whipped whites that give these waffles their lift. Sift the baking powder in with the flour instead, then fold the whites in last with a light hand.
- Quantities in modern termsTwo pints of sweet (unsoured) milk is 4 cups; one cup of melted butter is 8 oz or two sticks. The flour is not specified: "sifted flour to make a soft batter" probably lands somewhere near 4 cups of all-purpose flour, added until the batter pours thickly rather than runs.
- YieldAs written this makes roughly 3 quarts of batter, or 16 to 20 waffles depending on your iron. Halving it is sensible for a household of four.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons for roughly four cups of flour is close to modern proportions, and a good deal of the rise here comes from the eggs in any case. Modern double-acting powder releases its gas in two stages rather than all at once, unlike the single-acting products of the period; there is no need to increase the quantity.
- The butterA cup of butter to four cups of milk is very rich; these will brown fast and release easily but can taste greasy if the iron is also heavily greased. Grease once at the start and lightly thereafter.
- Iron temperatureOn an electric iron, medium-high, roughly 375 to 400F, suits this batter. Cook until steam stops escaping from the seam rather than by the clock.
- RestingBecause the leavening is folded in at the end, bake immediately. This batter will not hold in the refrigerator.
"Quick" in nineteenth-century cookbooks meant chemically leavened rather than fast to make: the alternative waffle was raised with yeast or a hop batter set the night before, and a cook who wanted waffles at short notice would, it is often said, reach for baking powder instead. The Dixie Cook-Book (first issued in the 1880s) is one of the compiled, contributor-credited household books of the era, which is why the recipe trails off into an attribution to a Mrs. someone and offers a frankly personal opinion about egg count. Waffle irons at the time were long-handled hinged cast iron, greased and heated on both faces over the fire or set into a stove opening, and had to be turned by hand partway through baking. Period batters, for their part, lean heavily on beaten whites and butter.