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Waffles (III)
Mrs. Carson.
One quart of milk, four eggs, two-thirds cup of butter, half teaspoon of sait, three teaspoons of Cook's Friend baking powder; flour enough for a batter, bake in waffle irons, and eat hot.
A plain nineteenth-century waffle batter, given in the shorthand of a cook who assumed you already owned the irons. Two things need filling in: how much flour, and what to do about the branded leavening.
- "Flour enough for a batter"The original leaves this to judgement. For a quart (4 cups) of milk, expect somewhere around 4 to 4 1/2 cups of flour — enough for a batter that pours thickly from the ladle rather than runs. Add it gradually and stop when it mounds slightly before settling.
- Cook's Friend baking powderA Canadian brand usually associated with McLaren's of Montreal, and a name still found on shelves. Any modern double-acting baking powder substitutes measure for measure, so three teaspoons stands. Note that this is a lightly leavened batter for its volume; the eggs do much of the work.
- "Sait"A typesetter's slip for salt. Half a teaspoon for a quart of milk is modest by current taste — a full teaspoon is not out of place.
- The butterTwo-thirds of a cup, melted and cooled slightly before it goes in, or it will scramble the eggs. It makes a rich batter; the recipe says nothing at all about greasing the irons.
- Separating the eggsNot called for here, though a number of nineteenth-century waffle recipes do beat the whites separately and fold them in last. It gives a noticeably lighter waffle and costs five minutes.
- Waffle ironsIn 1877 this would have meant hinged cast-iron plates, either on long handles heated over coals or set into an opening in the range top, turned partway through so both faces cooked. A modern electric iron needs no flipping; heat it fully before the first ladle, and grease that first one.
- Bake at onceChemical leavening starts working the moment it meets the wet ingredients. Mix, then cook straight through rather than letting the bowl stand.
- YieldA quart of milk makes a great deal of batter — roughly a dozen to sixteen waffles depending on iron size. Halve it for four people.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Toronto in 1877 by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada" and sold in aid of the Hospital for Sick Children — one of the earliest and most successful Canadian charity cookbooks, and the model for hundreds of church-and-society compilations that followed. Some recipes carry a contributor's name, which is why this one bears Mrs. Carson's signature and none of her reasoning: contributors were writing for neighbours who already knew the drill. The named baking powder is a small period marker in itself: Cook's Friend, a Montreal product, appears here as one cook's choice, though a single ingredient line will not tell us how widely the branded powders were used.