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Waffles
1/4 teaspoon salt. 3 teaspoons baking powder. 1½ cups flour teaspoon salt 2 egg yolks 3 teaspoons baking 2 tablespoons sugar 2 tablespoons melted fat powder 1 cup milk 2 egg whites Measure, mix and sift the first four ingredients; add the milk gradually, then egg yolks and melted fat, and mix thoroughly. Lastly, fold in the stiffly-beaten egg whites. Cook in a well-greased waffle iron.
The ingredient list has been scrambled by the original two-column typesetting; read it as 1½ cups flour, salt, 3 teaspoons baking powder, 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 cup milk, 2 egg yolks, 2 tablespoons melted fat, 2 egg whites. The method itself is sound and needs almost nothing.
- The salt quantityThe original reads only "teaspoon salt"; the fraction is missing from the text. For this volume of flour ½ teaspoon is a common figure in books of this era, though period recipes vary; a full teaspoon will taste distinctly salty.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons to 1½ cups flour is a heavy hand by modern standards. With fresh double-acting powder, 2 teaspoons gives comparable lift and less risk of a metallic aftertaste.
- "Melted fat"Household fat here meant lard, shortening or bacon drippings, whatever was in the pot. Melted butter or a neutral oil works identically; add it after the milk and yolks so it does not seize into lumps.
- Fold, do not stirThe whites do a good deal of the lifting here, and the batter is thinner and less enriched than a modern buttermilk one. Beat them to soft-firm peaks and fold in three additions, leaving a few streaks visible.
- Rest and consistencyUse the batter promptly, within about fifteen minutes, before the whites deflate. It should pour like heavy cream, and a tablespoon or two of extra milk is fair if the flour is thirsty.
- "Well-greased" ironLikely written with stovetop cast iron in mind, brushed with fat each round and heated until a drop of water danced on it, though electric irons were also in use by this period. A modern nonstick electric iron needs a light greasing for the first waffle only.
- YieldAbout four 7-inch round waffles, or two large square Belgian-style ones — three to four servings. Cook until the steam stops rising rather than by the clock.
The Metropolitan Cook Book was not sold but given away: Metropolitan Life Insurance Company distributed it to policyholders through its army of visiting agents, part of a broader early-twentieth-century campaign in which insurers promoted domestic hygiene and sound nutrition on the theory that healthier clients lived longer and cost less. That explains the flat, instructional prose and the emphasis on cheap staples — flour, milk, eggs, "fat" left unspecified so the cook could use whatever she had. Waffles themselves long predate the book; the ridged hinged iron heated over coals is medieval European in origin, and the name is generally traced to the Dutch wafel, brought to America by Dutch settlers. What marks this version as modern for its date is the chemical leavening: eighteenth- and nineteenth-century waffles were commonly raised with yeast and left to rise overnight, and it was reliable commercial baking powder, combined with beaten whites, that turned waffles into a dish a cook could decide on at breakfast time.