No. 3284

Waffles

Gaufres

Put half a pound of butter into a vessel with four ounces of sugar and a pinch of salt; beat well with a wooden spoon to obtain a creamy mass, then break in eight whole eggs one by one, stirring unceasingly, now add a pound of flour and half a pint of milk. Put the waffle irons (Fig. 608) on the fire, heat them to a proper degree and grease over with clarified butter, then take four tablespoonfuls of the paste and stir into it a small coffeespoonful of baking powder; pour it into the waffle irons, spreading it evenly; close and cook the waffles to a fine golden color, turning the iron from time to time. As soon as the waffles are done, pare the edges, take them out and dress on a covered dish, serving them very hot.

← No. 3283 Toasts, Dry, Buttered, Dipped in Water, Milk Breakfast Cakes No. 3285 Waffles with Vanilla—Light →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's waffle batter is closer to a rich wafer batter than to a modern breakfast pour: half its weight is butter, sugar and egg, and it is leavened one portion at a time. A few conversions and one structural point make it workable.

The hinge: leaven only what you cookThe baking powder is stirred into four tablespoons of batter immediately before it goes on the iron, not into the bowl. With a batter this heavy the gas escapes quickly, so batching the leavening is what keeps the last waffles as light as the first. Keep the mixed base cold and leaven each waffle as you go.
Weights in cupsHalf a pound of butter is 2 sticks (8 oz), four ounces of sugar is about ½ cup, a pound of flour is roughly 3½ cups spooned and levelled, and half a pint of milk is 1 cup. Weigh the flour if you can; a cup scooped straight from the bag holds appreciably more than a spooned one, and the batter will come out stiffer than intended.
A coffeespoonfulA coffeespoon is the small spoon of a 19th-century service, smaller than a modern teaspoon — somewhere between a quarter and a half of one. That is per four tablespoons of batter, so across the whole batch it comes to something in the range of one to three tablespoons of baking powder.
ConsistencyThis batter is thick, richer and heavier than a modern pour batter. The recipe still has you pour it into the iron and then spread it evenly, so expect to help it into the corners. A splash more milk gives a lighter, more familiar waffle at some cost to the crisp, cookie-like edge.
Irons and heatFig. 608 is a hinged iron, heated on the range and turned by hand — hence the recipe's "turning the iron from time to time." On an electric iron, set it to medium-high and skip the turning; on a gas burner with a stovetop iron, give each side 1½ to 2 minutes. Brush with clarified butter before the first waffle only — the batter carries enough fat after that.
Paring the edgesHinged irons squeeze batter out at the seam, leaving a thin fried frill. Trimming it with a knife while the waffle is still hot is purely cosmetic and unnecessary with a modern sealed iron.
Yield and servingAbout 18 to 20 waffles at four tablespoons each, serving eight to ten. Ranhofer sends them out plain on a covered dish, and they must go to the table hot — they toughen as they cool.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's summary of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is a professional book: the quantities are those of a restaurant kitchen, which is why a single waffle recipe starts with half a pound of butter and eight eggs. The French title gaufres points to the dish's ancestry in the medieval wafer, baked between long-handled hinged irons that were often engraved with a honeycomb pattern and the English "waffle" both descend from a Germanic word for honeycomb. The rich, sugared, cookie-adjacent batter here belongs to that Continental wafer tradition rather than to the leaner buttermilk-and-soda batters of American home cookbooks of the same decade; Ranhofer follows it immediately with a lighter vanilla version, suggesting the two were offered as alternatives on the same card.