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Waffles (Two cupfuls of rich sour cream)
Two cupfuls of rich sour cream, one teaspoonful soda, one saltspoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of melted butter, two eggs beaten light, dissolve the soda in a very little hot water, add the soda to the sour cream; add the flour last. If the batter is too stiff, thin with a little milk. Serve at luncheon, with maple sugar or syrup.
The recipe assumes two things a modern cook does not have: a bowl of naturally soured cream, and a stovetop waffle iron heated over coals. Everything else is straightforward.
- The flour is not measuredNo quantity is given; the cook was expected to judge by consistency. For two cupfuls of cream, start with about 2 cups of all-purpose flour and stop when the batter is thick but still pourable, then thin with milk as directed.
- "Rich sour cream" is not the tub in the dairy caseThis means cream that has soured naturally on standing — pourable, tangy, roughly the consistency of heavy cream. Modern cultured sour cream is far too thick; thin it with milk to a pouring consistency, or use buttermilk with a couple of tablespoons of melted butter added.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon.
- The soda is the leaveningThere is no baking powder here. The teaspoon of soda reacts with the acid in the soured cream, so the batter is best put onto a hot iron promptly — a batter left to stand loses some of its lift.
- Dissolving the sodaStirring dry soda into a thick batter leaves bitter yellow streaks. Dissolving it in a spoonful of hot water first, as instructed, disperses it evenly, and it is worth doing even now.
- The ironPresumably a hinged cast-iron waffle iron set over a range, greased and turned partway through, though the recipe says nothing about the iron. An electric iron at a medium-high setting works; grease it for the first waffle even if it is nonstick, since this batter has relatively little fat.
- YieldAbout six to eight waffles depending on the iron, enough for three or four at luncheon.
- Maple sugarSold in hard cakes at the time and shaved or grated over the waffles. Maple syrup does the same job.
Sour-cream and sour-milk batters were everywhere in nineteenth-century American cookery for a practical reason: before refrigeration, cream that had stood a day or two was soured cream, and the acid in it made a leavener out of a pinch of soda. Waffle irons — long-handled hinged plates worked over an open fire or a range — were standard kitchen equipment in the United States well before electric models appeared.