Carnival of the Recipes #48: The Waffles of The Ancients

Update: I'm only a weeeeee bit late in getting this up, but Welcome welcome, Carnival of the recipes readers! (Hosted this week by vw bug at One Happy Dog Speaks)

Mmmm. Waffles- one of mankind’s greatest inventions. Not only the perfect syrup-delivery vehicle, but a tasty bread on its own. (But really- how can you eat them without syrup?)

Well; I was helping out with cleaning up my mom’s cooking bookshelf a while back, and came across a wonderful book:

As you can see, my being 24 and all, it’s obvious why I call it the Epicurean Tome of the Ancients:

Now, then- I think you see where I’m going with this. Especially if you actually read the title of the post.

(Spoken in a booming bass, echoing as if within a deep cavern:)

THE WAFFLES OF THE ANCIENTS

Oh. My. Gosh. These buggers are honestly the best waffles I’ve had… ever. They’re good, and DAMN are they filling. Normally, it takes 2-3 of what I call waffles to fill me up. These buggers take… one? Two if I’m starving. (What do I call waffles? Well, I grew up with a 14 inch square waffle iron. It technically makes 4 waffles that are attached with a not-too-thin membrane of waffle, but hey; I never separated them. So that’s one waffle. Yes I’m big guy. But I’m working on that. I don’t even eat one of these anymore. I WISH I could, but then I’d balloon. But I’m getting off topic. Again.)

Time for the recipe. 2 recipes, actually. I’ll explain in a bit. Also- I’ll comment on and/or augment the recipe in italics.

Sweet Milk Waffles

1 1/3 cups Flour
½ teaspoon Salt
2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
1 Teaspoon sugar
2 Eggs (Separated)
¼ Cup Melted Butter or butter substitute (a.k.a. margarine.)
1 Cup Sweet Milk (See notes.)

And, using the same directions (so I’ll only enter them once):

Sour Milk Waffles

1 1/3 cups Flour
½ teaspoon Salt
½ Teaspoon Baking Soda
1 Teaspoon sugar
2 Eggs (Separated)
¼ Cup Melted Shortening
1 Cup Sour Milk (See notes.)

I’m going to rewrite the instructions so you know what the hell you’re doing, simply because, I’m telling you, they’re in code. That or they assume that you’re a 1950s housewife and know damn well how to cook. To quote Glenn Raynolds, heh. In fact… here they are, in all their glory. Understandable to most anyone instructions to follow.

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Sift flour, measure, and sift with salt and baking powder. Beat Egg yolks until light and foamy. Add sugar and shortening. Mix well. Add milk alternately with sifted dry ingredients to egg mixture. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Bake in hot waffle iron. 6 servings.

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Well. That was fun, eh? Did you have to make a couple of double takes? Yeah, that’s pretty normal. Unless you’re a 1950’s housewife, I’ll assume. But there aren’t that many left. My Grandma is one, but then, this IS her book.

Well; now for understandable directions.

1. Sift your flour, measure out the 1 1/3 cups (See Notes). Sift in the Salt and Baking powder, set aside.

2. Separate your eggs; setting the whites aside for now. Whip the hell out of your yolks, until they foam up. (Not too long; the protiens don’t respond well to that.)

3. To the egg yolks, add the sugar and melted butter (or margarine), mix well.

4. Alternately add the Milk and Dry Mixture to the egg mixture, a little at a time.

5. Whip the Egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gently fold this into the batter.

6. Go for it. If you have one of those crappy electric irons, do as you normally do. If you have a proper old iron stovetop iron… do as you usually do. If you don’t have a waffle iron… what the hell are you making this for? Better yet, why the hell haven’t you got a waffle iron? Go! Get one, dummy!

Notes:

Sweet Milk? Sour Milk? The hell???

Upon consulting with my mother, I discovered that, this recipe being from the 1930s, it kinda predates the common use of skim milk, and of reliable storage of milk. (Can’t remember if it’s because it wasn’t pasteurized/homogenized, or if it was lack of reliable refrigeration, or what. I think it was just that it was all whole milk.)

SO; you’d end up with there being just plain ‘ol “Milk.” Whole milk, essentially. So if you want to be really, truly accurate, use whole milk in the recipe. Now- Sweet? Sour?

Sweet milk is what is commonly referred to as “milk.” That’s it. Why then the sweet name? To differentiate it from Sour milk. That being old milk that has, da-da-da-dum, gone sour. If you want to fake this (and make the recipe that, in my opinion, is the best of the two), just add a little bit of lemon juice to your milk (I think it was about 1 tsp/cup) or just use buttermilk. Hells yeah.

About the flour- it's really almost impossible to accurately measure flour by volume. Weight, yes. Volume? Please. But sifting it, then measuring will help, simply because it gets everyones flour to a similar density.

Anyway.

You MUST eat these with butter and maple syrup. Or the odd concoction my dad would (and now I) make- (it’s nameless, so I won’t separate it out into another post, or even title this section.)

Make a basic syrup (double sugar to water, stir, nuke or boil until it’s… you know, boiling… then stir. It’ll all be absorbed. Now then- add some almond flavoring, a touch of lemon, and a wee little bit of maple. Add more maple to taste. Should be a light, nutty brown (because of the maple.) Sooo much better than plain maple. Oh, man.

No, I don’t have exact amounts. What. Sheesh. It’s a homemade recipe.

I dunno, try 2C water, 4C sugar, ¼ tsp almond, 1/8 or less lemon, and whatever of maple. ¼, ½ tsp?

Anyhoo. These waffles are SO good. Filling as all get out, they NEED butter, syrup, and milk to drink. But DAMN, they’re good.

Update: Woops; not 1930s, 1950s. Knew it was from the 50's but trusted my eyes rather than my memory, and look what that gets me. Well; correct now.

Filed in: RecipeCarnival Waffles Breakfast Archeology History