Waffles
3 cupfuls flour 2 tablespoonfuls melted Crisco 2 teaspoonful baking soda 2 eggs 1 teaspoonful salt 1 tablespoonful sugar ½ cupfuls sour milk Mix and sift dry ingredients, add milk gradually, yolks of eggs well beaten, melted Crisco, and whites of eggs beaten to stiff froth; cook on hot waffle iron greased with Crisco. Serve with maple syrup, or honey and butter.
Waffles may be served for breakfast, luncheon, supper or high tea. A waffle iron should fit closely on range, be well heated on one side, turned, heated on other side, and thoroughly greased with Crisco before iron is filled. In filling, put tablespoonful of mixture in each compartment near Breads, etc. the center of iron, cover, and mixture will spread to fill iron. If sufficiently heated, it should be turned almost as soon as filled and covered. In using new iron, special care must be taken in greasing, or waffles will stick. Sufficient for six waffles. 2 cupfuls sugar 1 cupful Crisco
A sour-milk waffle batter from the Crisco book, written for a stovetop cast-iron waffle iron rather than an electric one. Nothing here is difficult, but two details in the original will trip up a modern cook.
- Ignore the last lineThe trailing "2 cupfuls sugar 1 cupful Crisco" belongs to the recipe that followed on the page and has nothing to do with the waffles. The batter is complete at the beaten egg whites.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, which pasteurised milk will not reproduce — it spoils rather than clabbers. Use buttermilk cup for cup, or stir a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar into 2 cups of whole milk and let it stand ten minutes.
- Soda, not baking powderThe 1½ teaspoons of soda are there to react with the acid in the sour milk. If you substitute sweet milk, the soda has nothing to work against and the waffles will taste soapy and turn yellowish; switch to baking powder in that case, reckoning roughly 1 to 1½ teaspoons per cup of flour.
- CriscoAny flavourless solid or liquid fat works — melted shortening, vegetable oil or melted butter. Two tablespoons in three cups of flour is a lean batter by modern standards; up to four gives a crisper edge.
- Folding the whitesBeat the whites separately to a stiff froth and fold them in last, as written. Stirring them through will knock out the lift this batter depends on and give you flat, tough waffles.
- The stovetop ironThe instruction to heat one side, turn, heat the other and grease thoroughly applies to a cast-iron iron set over a burner. On an electric waffle iron, preheat fully and brush both plates once; a well-seasoned or non-stick plate needs no further greasing between batches.
- Turning"Turned almost as soon as filled" is only for the hinged stovetop iron, which sits over the burner and must be flipped so both plates cook. An electric iron stays shut for three to five minutes, until the steam slows.
- YieldThe book gives "Sufficient for six waffles," but period irons varied in size and this quantity of batter will make more than six waffles on a modern iron.
- Resting the batterCook it soon after mixing. Soda begins reacting with the sour milk immediately and a batter left standing half an hour will have lost much of its rise.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to introduce cooks to hydrogenated cottonseed oil, a fat that had no culinary tradition behind it and so needed a book of familiar recipes to make its case. Waffles were an obvious choice: the recipe follows the general pattern of the American sour-milk waffle common in turn-of-the-century manuals, with lard or butter swapped out for the new product. Sour milk itself was ordinary household economy: milk that had turned was too valuable to waste, and the acid it carried was the working partner of baking soda in griddle cakes, biscuits and quick breads. The note that waffles suit "breakfast, luncheon, supper or high tea" reflects a period when they were a general-purpose hot bread rather than a strictly morning dish, and the elaborate instructions for heating and greasing a stovetop iron mark the years just before electric irons made the skill unnecessary.