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Waffles
M.
Yolks of three eggs, one quart milk, half cup melted butter, one heaping teaspoon Cook's Friend baking powder. Afterwards add the whites of the eggs and flour enough to make a thin batter.
A very plain waffle batter of the kind meant for a hinged cast-iron iron set over coals. The measurements are loose by design, so a little judgment is needed at the flour stage.
- Cook's Friend baking powderA Canadian brand of the period (sold as McLaren's Cook's Friend, out of Montreal); any modern double-acting baking powder stands in. One heaping teaspoon is roughly 1 1/2 level teaspoons.
- Leavening is under-scaledA quart of milk will take something like 3 1/2 to 4 cups of flour, and modern practice is about 1 teaspoon baking powder per cup. The beaten whites carry much of the lift here; if you want a reliably light waffle, raise the powder to 3 or 4 teaspoons.
- "Thin batter"Aim for the consistency of heavy cream — it should pour and spread on its own rather than mound. Add the flour in stages; stop while it still runs freely off the spoon.
- The whitesThe recipe says only "afterwards add the whites," but period practice implies they were beaten and stirred in last. Handle gently and bake at once; a batter that sits deflates.
- Butter quantityHalf a cup is 4 oz / 115 g melted. Let it cool slightly before it meets the yolks so it does not set into threads.
- Heat and timingOn a modern electric iron use a medium-high setting and cook 3 to 5 minutes, until steam stops escaping from the seam. A stovetop cast-iron iron wants preheating and greasing before every single waffle.
- YieldRoughly 16 waffles from a quart of milk, depending on the size of the iron; this is a batter written for a full table. It halves readily, allowing for the odd third egg.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Toronto in 1877 by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada" to raise money for the Hospital for Sick Children, and it is generally credited as the first Canadian fundraising cookbook of its kind. The brand-name call for Cook's Friend baking powder is a fingerprint of that moment: chemical leavening was recent enough that recipes often named a particular maker, and manufacturers advertised in books of this kind. The waffle itself is much older, associated in North America with Dutch and German settlers and with the long-handled hinged iron that gave it its grid; recipes like this one, thinned with a full quart of milk and lightened largely with whipped whites, sit at the point where the older egg-raised batter was giving way to the powdered tin on the shelf.