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Waffles (II)
Mrs. S. McMaster.
One quart of sweet or sour milk, four eggs, two-thirds of a cup of butter, half a teaspoonful of salt. three teaspoons of Cook's Friend baking powder; flour enough to make a nice batter. If you use sour milk leave out the baking powder and use two teaspoons soda. Splendid.
A plain 19th-century waffle batter, unsweetened and leavened two different ways depending on what milk you have. The quantities are large by modern standards and the flour is left entirely to your judgement.
- The hinge: batter consistency"Flour enough to make a nice batter" means thick heavy cream — it should pour from a ladle in a ribbon, not drop in lumps. For a quart of milk expect roughly 4 to 4 1/2 cups of flour; add it gradually and stop when the batter mounds slightly then levels.
- Cook's Friend baking powderA Canadian brand available in this period. Any modern double-acting baking powder substitutes teaspoon for teaspoon.
- Sour milk means buttermilkThe sour milk of this period was raw milk left to clabber, mildly acidic and thickened. Use cultured buttermilk. Modern pasteurized milk that has gone off is spoiled rather than soured and should not be used.
- Soda needs the acidTwo teaspoons of soda is correct only with the full quart of sour milk — about half a teaspoon per cup, which the buttermilk's acid will neutralise. With sweet milk take the baking powder route as written, or the waffles taste of soda.
- ButterTwo-thirds of a cup is about 150 g. Melt it and let it cool a little before beating it into the eggs and milk, or it will seize into flecks.
- No sugarThere is none in the recipe. Batters like this were sweetened at the table rather than in the bowl.
- The ironWritten for a hinged cast-iron waffle iron heated on the stove top and turned partway through cooking. In an electric iron, cook at a medium-high setting until the steam slows, roughly 4 to 5 minutes. Grease a cast-iron iron between each waffle; a nonstick electric one needs it only for the first.
- YieldA quart of milk makes a great deal of batter, likely a dozen or more waffles in a standard iron. Halve everything for a small household.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Toronto in 1877 by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada," one of the earliest Canadian community cookbooks, sold in aid of the Hospital for Sick Children. Its contributed recipes carry their donors' names, as this one does, and Mrs. McMaster gives both leavenings in one breath, with the branded tin first and the older soda-and-sour-milk method as the fallback. Waffles came to North American kitchens largely through Dutch settlement — the long-handled hinged iron held over coals or set into a stove hole is much older than the batter here. The closing "Splendid" is the contributor's own endorsement of her recipe, common enough in books of this kind.