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Wafer Biscuits
(Cialdoni) Put in a kettle:
Flour, three ounces.
Brown sugar, one ounce.
Lard virgin, half an ounce.
Cold water, seven tablespoonfuls.
First dilute the flour and the sugar in the water, then add the lard.
Put on the fire the iron for waffles or better an appropriated iron for flattened wafers. When it is quite hot open it and place each time half a tablespoonful of the paste. Close the iron and press well. Pass over the fire on both sides, trim all around with a knife and open the iron when you see that the wafer is browned. Then detach it from one side of the iron and hot as it is roll it on the iron itself or on a napkin using a little stick. This operation must be made with great rapidity because if the wafer gets cold, it cannot be rolled.
Should the wafers remain attached to the iron, grease it from time to time, and if they are not firm enough, add a little flour.
These wafer-biscuits are generally served with whipped cream.
A thin batter cooked between hot irons and rolled while still pliable — the Italian ancestor of the cannoli shell and the ice-cream cone. Everything depends on speed at the moment the wafer comes off the iron.
- The hinge: roll them hotA wafer stiffens within seconds of leaving the iron and will shatter rather than curl. Work one at a time, keep the rolling stick (a wooden spoon handle or metal cannoli tube) beside the stove, and if one cools too far, return it to the closed iron for a few seconds to soften.
- Weights, not cupsThree ounces flour is about 85 g, roughly 2/3 cup; one ounce sugar is 30 g, about 2 tablespoons; half an ounce lard is 15 g, a scant tablespoon. Seven tablespoonfuls of water is a little under half a cup. The batter should pour like thin cream — adjust with a spoonful more water or flour.
- "Lard virgin"Strutto/lardo vergine, i.e. fresh unsalted rendered pork fat, mild and pale, rather than salted or reused fat. Modern leaf lard or plain unsalted butter both work; hydrogenated supermarket lard carries a flat taste that shows in so thin a biscuit.
- Brown sugarUnrefined sugar of the period was often paler and less molasses-heavy than the dark brown sugar sold today, and 'brown sugar' is the English translator's rendering. Light brown or ordinary caster sugar is the safer choice; dark brown sugar is more likely to darken on the hot iron before the wafer sets.
- The ironA pizzelle or cialde iron is the direct descendant and is what to use. A Belgian waffle iron makes pockets too deep to roll; a stovetop iron passed over the burner on both sides, as directed, gives the closest result. Electric pizzelle irons take roughly 30–45 seconds per wafer.
- Greasing and trimmingBrush the plates lightly with lard between batches only as needed — too much and the batter slides and thins. Trimming the squeezed-out edge with a knife while the iron is closed, as the text says, is easier than snapping it off afterwards.
- YieldAt half a tablespoonful of batter per wafer, as directed, these quantities run to a couple of dozen small wafers. They keep crisp for several days in a tin but go limp in humid air; re-crisp them briefly in a low oven.
- ServingThe original says only that these are generally served with whipped cream. If you do fill the rolled tubes, do it at the last minute: the shells soften within minutes of contact with cream.
Cialde and their rolled form cialdoni belong to a family of iron-baked wafers found across medieval and early modern Europe, from French oublies to Dutch wafels; in Italy they are especially associated with Tuscany and the Marche, where brigidini and cialde di Montecatini are still sold. The engraved irons, often bearing a family crest or a religious device, were heirloom kitchen equipment, and the wafers were fair and festival food as much as household baking. The rolled tube is often said to be the ancestor of two better-known things: the Sicilian cannolo shell and the wrapped cone that carries gelato. This version comes from Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919), a small New York volume that drew heavily on Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina and put plain regional Italian home cooking in front of an American readership — hence the note that the biscuits are "generally served with whipped cream."