wafers-msg - 1/9/08 Period wafers. Waffles. Wafer recipes and directions. wafer irons. NOTE: See also the files: bread-msg, breadmaking-msg, desserts-msg, pancakes-msg, utensils-msg, cookies-msg, flour-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 11:52:14 -0800 From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com> Subject: Re: Wafer recipe (WAS: Re: Re: SC - Weekend Tart Review and Cookie request! Chimene asked about wafer recipes. Here is what the Menagier de Paris has to say about wafers or waffles (the word could be translated either way): "Waffles are made in four ways. In the first, beat eggs in a bowl, then salt and wine, and add flour, and moisten the one with the other, and then put in two irons little by little, each time using as much batter as a slice of cheese is wide, and clap between two irons, and cook one side and then the other; and if the iron does not easily release the batter, anoint with a little cloth soaked in oil or fat. - The second way is like the first, but add cheese, that is, spread the batter as though making a tart or pie, then put slices of cheese in the middle, and cover the edges (with batter: JH); thus the cheese stays within the batter and thus you put it between two irons. - The third method, is for dropped waffles, called dropped only because the batter is thinner like clear soup, made as above; and throw in with it fine cheese grated; and mix it all together. - The fourth method is with flour mixed with water, salt and wine, without eggs or cheese. "Item, waffles can be used when one speaks of the "large sticks" which are made of flour mixed with eggs and powdered ginger beaten together, and made as big as and shaped like sausages; cook between two irons." This is the Janet Hinson translation. Elizabeth/Betty Cook Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 17:29:23 -0500 From: renfrow at skylands.net (Cindy Renfrow) Subject: Re: SC - Waffres ala Master Huen <snip> >I bow to your expertise, M'Lady. >However, putting the stomach of a luce, or of a pike into such a delicate >recipe makes no sense. It would add a strong fishy taste, and very little >else. >Would it be entirely off base to think that perhaps, since this is a fish day >recipe, in an effort to add the character of fowl eggs, which were forbidden, >the cook chose to use fish eggs? > >Mordonna Um, the recipe *does* call for hen's eggs, unless luce eggs are big enough to crack & separate?: Harleian MS. 279 - Leche Vyaundez xxiiij. Waffres. Take [th]e Wombe of A luce, & se[th]e here wyl, & do it on a morter, & tender chese [th]er-to, grynde hem y-fere; [th]an take flowre an whyte of Eyroun & bete to-gedere, [th]en take Sugre an pouder of Gyngere, & do al to-gederys, & loke [th]at [th]in Eyroun ben hote, & ley [th]er-on of [th]in paste, & [th]an make [th]in waffrys, & serue yn. 24. Wafers. Take the Stomach of A pike, & seethe her well, & put it in a mortar, & tender cheese thereto, grind them together; then take flour and white of Eggs & beat together, then take Sugar and powder of Ginger, & put all together, & look that thine Eggs are hot, & lay thereon of thine paste, & then make thine wafers, & serve in. I find the method somewhat confusing, unless we're being instructed to make 2 mixtures, i.e., a thick one with the fish & cheese, & another mixture with flour, eggwhite, sugar & ginger. Le Menagier (Goodman, p. 306) gives instructions for cheese wafers that don't leak, in which the paste is spread out, filled with strips of cheese, & then the ends of the paste are folded into the middle, & the whole thing transferred to the waffle iron & cooked. I think that's what is happening here. (<SHRIEK!> Pocket sandwiches are period! ;D <laughing>) Stirring up trouble, Cindy Renfrow/Sincgiefu renfrow at skylands.net Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1999 02:01:53 -0500 From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> Subject: SC - Quick and Dirty Wafer Redaction I don't recall if this has been worked on or commented on by anybody on the list, but I had occasion to make some wafers for an event I'm going to Saturday, and I figured an account of the proceedings might be helpful to someone. From Gervase Markham's "The English Hus-Wife", 1615, Michael Best edition, 1986 McGill-Queens University Press, Kingston and Montreal: "To make wafers To make the best wafers, take the finest wheat flour you can get, and mix it with cream, the yolks of eggs, rose-water, sugar, and cinnamon till it be a little thicker than pancake batter; and then, warming your wafer irons on a charcoal fire, anoint them first with sweet butter, and then lay your batter and press it, and bake it white or brown at your pleasure." After consulting a few Italian pizzelle recipes for some basic proportions, I ended up with the following: 3 cups (~450 grams plain) all-purpose flour 1 U.S. pint (~500 grams) heavy cream 6 large egg yolks, beaten 1/4 - 1/2 cup (60 - 120 grams) rosewater 1 cup (~250 grams) sugar 1/8 teaspoon (~1 ml) ground cinnamon pinch salt Sift the flour, cinnamon, and the salt together, set aside. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until light and bright yellow. Add the cream and 1/4 cup (60 grams) rosewater, mix thoroughly. Fold the dry ingredients into the liquid. If the batter is too thick, you can thin it with more rosewater until it is clearly a soft batter but too thick to easily pour: your basic American "cream" cake batter. Heat a pizzelle or other wafer iron for two or three minutes; if it's the kind that you sit on a stove burner, heat each side for two minutes. Brush a little melted butter on the inside of the irons, and spoon an appropriate amount of batter into the irons. You'll need to experiment to get the exact amount and placement right. My old-fashioned 5-inch pizzelle iron uses a heaping teaspoon of batter (roughly a level dessertspoon for those that use such measures). Bake till golden, and be aware that the wafers will continue to brown a bit after they come out of the irons. Cool on a cake rack until crispy or roll into tubes or cones while hot and flexible. Makes about three dozen, depending on the size of the iron, and the obvious necessity to hide several that are unevenly browned by immediately eating them. You have your reputation to consider, after all. Historically, most of the wafers eaten in period Europe appear not to have been very sweet, but I've used a fair amount of sugar both to appease the tastes of those who will look at a wafer and see a cookie, and to achieve a crisp but tender, sort of brittle, product. Un-or-barely-sweetened wafers, such as the cheese wafers mentioned in Le Menagier de Paris, should probably be made with a much softer flour than AP, probably some kind of pastry flour would be the way to get them decently crisp without a lot of sugar. AP tends to be slightly glutinous in this wafer when unsweetened, especially when using dilute or secondary shortening sources like egg yolks and cream. Of course, we can't really be sure how crispy wafers were supposed to get in period, either. If you manage to bring leftovers home from events, they make excellent ice cream sandwiches... . Adamantius Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 20:52:39 EST From: Aelfwyn at aol.com Subject: SC - Wafers/Oblaten Just a couple of additional mail order sources I spotted this week for those curious; King Arthur Flour carries "Baking Wafers" in 2 sizes and offers free shipping on them. It mentions that they "are designed to cradle certain German cookies as they bake on a baking sheet; they're a kind of edible parchment." 1-800-827-6836 or www.kingarthurflour.com The Stash Tea Spring catalog offers "Dessert Wafers" "Faithfully baked following a 200 year old European recipe, these delicate crisp wafers are made of pounded almonds, sweet butter, pure cane sugar and rare bourbon vanilla beans." The most interesting part is the tin these come in that says "The Original Carlsbad Oblaten" on the outside! 1-800-826-4218 or www.stashtea.com The catalog queen; Aelfwyn Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1999 16:57:01 -0600 (CST) From: alysk at ix.netcom.com (Elise Fleming) Subject: SC - German Oblaten Greetings! The term probably _does_ refer to communion-type wafers since they are still commercially available. The German import house here in Cleveland had at least three different sizes a number of years ago which I used for the base of my small marchpanes. The modern oblaten are very white and papery, which reminds many of us of the communion wafers that melt in the mouth, or that "papery" substance used on Italian nougats. How papery the German wafers would have been in the 1500s and 1600s, I don't know. English marchpanes call for the marzipan to be laid on "wafers". IIRC, at least one recipe calls for layering the wafers to increase the dimension of the marchpane. Some English recipes for marchpanes indicate that their thickness is about "two fingers", again IIRC. Alys Katharine Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 12:33:30 -0700 From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com> Subject: Re: SC - Recipies At 11:06 AM -0700 5/13/99, Nancy Santella wrote: ... >Crisps >From the mother of Canstance Waite If you want a period recipe for this sort of thing take a look at the wafers recipe (I don't remember how it is spelled) in Le Menagier; the Hinson translation is webbed on my page (follow the medieval link). David/Cariadoc http://www.best.com/~ddfr/ Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 06:43:19 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> Subject: Re: SC - wafer help Stefan li Rous wrote: > This page says "complete with cone roller" and shows a shallow wooden > cone with a handle on it. Anyone know what this cone is for? To roll > the fresh, soft pizelle around to get a cone? Since you are mashing > the dough between two hot surfaces, I don't think it is for smoothing > the wafer with. If it is to make a cone with, is their any evidence of > this cone shape being used in period? I just remembered seeing "rolled". The Larousse (that's Larousse, not Li Rous ; ) ) Gastronomique speaks of the habit of rolling wafers into both tubes and cornucopia while hot, becoming brittle as they cool, and says the practice is quite old. We know, of course, well, Larousse has been known to have a Francocentric view of both world history and food history (as does Toussaint-Hamat, if I've got the name right) so the occasional error shows up which is as wide in dissemination as it is in inaccuracy. Or maybe the other way around; I haven't had my tea yet, leemee alone. It has some alleged facts in it which are, well, alleged. But yes, they do seem to at least imply that rolling wafers into cones was not unheard of in period. The main problem is that the recipes and other information we have suggests wafers weren't always crispy enough to make holding a formed shape likely. I wonder if a cone might have been wrapped around cheese? Adamantius Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 06:49:32 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> Subject: Re: SC - Pizelles > I think I missed the post that this is a reply to. Are pizelles period? We > make 'em all the time around here, but I never thought they were period. > Caitlin ingen ui Dalaig Wafers seem to have been widely eaten in period Europe, and pizelle irons seem to be a pretty good way to recreate the shape and pattern of a wafer. Pizelles tend to be made according to a somewhat different recipe, with eggs usually separated, more sugar, etc., but they are presumably a reasonably close descendant. Gervase Markham's "The English Hus-Wife", c. 1615, gives a wafer recipe that works quite well with a pizelle iron. Adamantius Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 19:48:34 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> Subject: Re: SC - Wafer recipes please? Anne-Marie Rousseau wrote: > does anyone have a reconstructed recipe that they like for wafers??? I'm almost positive (no, I _am_ positive) I posted a reconstruction of the Markham wafer recipe from The English Hus-wife, 1615, in March or so, maybe early April. Trouble is, I now can't find it. By any chance did anyone see it? It worked _really_ well except for a tendency to brown a bit blotchy if you're not careful: I attribute this to the milk solids in the cream. [His original recipe is given further up in this file. - editor] Adamantius Subject: Re: wafers Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 09:17:57 -0600 (MDT) From: Linda Peterson <mirhaxa at swcp.com> To: Stefan li Rous <stefan at texas.net> Ps. I was just looking at the Maid of Scandinavia, which jogged my memory that the wafer irons are sometimes refered to as krumkake irons, which may help in your search. The site also had some recipes under the krumkake heading. Mirhaxa [the URL is: http://www.sweetc.com/maid.htm -ed] Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 02:07:42 EDT From: Korrin S DaArdain <korrin.daardain at juno.com> Subject: Re: SC - Wafer recipes please? OOP - Recipe Not a period recipe but it is a start. Cooky Cones 3 eggs 2/3 cup sugar 2/3 cup butter / margarine 2 tsp vanilla 1 tsp almond extract 1 cup all purpose flour Use a krumkakka iron; bake and roll to cone form, either free hand or around a cone form. In a medium sized mixing bowl, beat together eggs, sugar, melted butter, vanilla, and almond extract. stir in flour until smoothly blended. Place flat griddle plates on electric waffle iron and preeheat to medium hot; or use a krumkakka iron. Makes about 18 small or 9 large cones. Source: Betty Storrey; Kerman, Cal. via Sunset Magazine 6/83. Korrin S. DaArdain Kitchen Steward of Household Port Karr Kingdom of An Tir in the Society for Creative Anachronism. Korrin.DaArdain at Juno.com Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 10:00:42 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> Subject: Re: SC - Revisited Wafers Redaction The wafers in question, BTW, go great with the "snow" from the New Proper Boke of Cookery, a stiff-whipped mixture of egg whites and heavy cream, sweetened with sugar and flavored with rosewater. Adamantius Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 21:14:35 -0700 (PDT) From: Laura C Minnick <lainie at gladstone.uoregon.edu> Subject: Re: SC - Wafer recipes please? I just checked- there is a readaction of a wafes recipe from _menagier de Paris_ in _Pleyn Delit_. I don't have an iron so I tried doing it like a crepe. Interesting, but not what I wanted. My birthday is in November... ;-) 'Lainie - - Laura C. Minnick Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 15:32:53 -0500 From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US> Subject: RE: SC - Cone History > Is there a linguistic relationship between wafer and waffle? Could these > terms have become applied to items cooked between layers of metal? > > Mirhaxa > mirhaxa at morktorn.com Wafer derives from the Middle English wafre which comes from the Old Northern French waufre which is apparently of Germanic origin. Waffle derives from the Dutch wafel. Wafers are thin, crisp biscuits, cookies, cakes or candies. Waffles are battercakes cooked in or on an iron mold. These definitions suggest that wafers and waffles are two different classes of dish with some overlap. So, the terms get put on the list for my next trip to the OED. Bear Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 22:00:12 -0700 From: "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at efn.org> Subject: Re: SC - Recipe needed Kerri Canepa wrote: > All this talk about pizzelle made me go out and buy one. That and we're going > to serve wafers at the 12th Night feast next January. > Is there an authentic wafer recipe? I'd like to have time to play with making > wafers before the real thing. There is a wafer recipe from _Menagier de Paris_ redacted and ready in _Pleyn Delit_. You might want to see what MP has, since the editors of PD mention that some of the wafers have cheese and some don't. You might want to look at sweet as well as savories... 'Lainie Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1999 00:25:33 -0500 From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US> Subject: RE: SC - Recipe needed Scully's redaction of Menagier's recipe from Early French Cookery: Wafers (makes about 30 4-inch round wafers) (Imperial measure) 4 eggs 1 tsp salt 2 tbsp sugar 4 tbsp dessert wine 2-3 tsp oil or fat 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp all purpose flour 1-2 tbsp sugar Beat eggs lightly. Whisk in salt, wine, oil and sugar. Whisk in flour 1 tablespoon at a time until a smooth runny paste is reached. Drop 1 tablespoon at a time onto a hot sandwich grill or Krumcake iron. Close grill and press on lid. Cook until lightly brown--about 1 minute. Sprinkle with sugar. Store in airtight container in cool, dry place until needed. Re-crisp in a low oven (275 F) before serving. Bear Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 06:15:21 GMT From: kerric at pobox.alaska.net (Kerri Canepa) Subject: SC - Adventures with wafers - part the second (long) In the continuing testing of wafers, today's endeavors involved Scully's redaction of one of the wafer recipes from Menagier. Thanks, Bear. Scully's redaction of Menagier's recipe from Early French Cookery: Wafers (makes about 30 4-inch round wafers) (Imperial measure) 4 eggs 1 tsp salt 2 tbsp sugar 4 tbsp dessert wine 2-3 tsp oil or fat 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp all purpose flour 1-2 tbsp sugar The dessert wine was Madeira (it's what my apprentice had on hand) and the oil was soybean (also, what was available). Beat eggs lightly. Whisk in salt, wine, oil and sugar. Whisk in flour 1 tablespoon at a time until a smooth runny paste is reached. Drop 1 tablespoon at a time onto a hot sandwich grill or Krumcake iron. Close grill and press on lid. Cook until lightly brown--about 1 minute. Sprinkle with sugar. The final measures were as stated except for 1/2 cup + 1 1/2 tbsp flour and 2 tbsp of oil. The batter was clearer than the from the previous recipe but then there was less flour and more egg in it, but it had the right consistency. Learning from the first trials, I set the burner on 8 and let it heat up until water sizzled off the top. Put about a tablespoon or so of batter on the iron and closed it. I thought there was much whooshing of steam and squirting of batter the last time; this was downright explosive. It was also quite a workout on the hands (need to build up your grip? Make wafers...). This recipe made exactly 2 dozen 5 inch wafers in about an hour and 15 minutes. These wafers are also much softer than the previous recipe and there's plenty of time to roll them before they harden. In fact, you'd have to hold them for a minute or two in whatever shape you want before they'll keep that shape. The texture is spongier and the wafers tear more than they break. I suspect the eggs in the recipe contribute greatly to this. As for taste, I place them more in the savory category than sweet. Again there's less sugar than the previous recipe but also there's the addition of salt which is absent from the first. My husband, after having been on a long distance motorcycle trip returned home tired and hungry, snagged one of the wafers upon walking into the kitchen and said "I don't like these as much." Well, they aren't the subtle cookie/wafer the first batch was. However, I think the second batch would hold up to hypocras in flavor. I don't particularly care for the texture but then who knows what wafers were really like? Thankfully, there were no interruptions during this test. Both the kittens crashed and slept until I had only 3 wafers left and I thoughtfully pulled down the smoke alarm even before turning on the stove. I set aside four wafers from each batch to test how well they hold up to storage. Tuesday my apprentice comes over and we'll see what the verdict is. Kerri Cedrin Etainnighean, OL Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 04:43:34 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> Subject: Re: SC - Adventures with wafers - part the second (long) Kerri Canepa wrote: > These wafers are also much softer than the previous recipe and there's plenty of > time to roll them before they harden. In fact, you'd have to hold them for a > minute or two in whatever shape you want before they'll keep that shape. The > texture is spongier and the wafers tear more than they break. I suspect the eggs > in the recipe contribute greatly to this. > > As for taste, I place them more in the savory category than sweet. Again there's > less sugar than the previous recipe but also there's the addition of salt which > is absent from the first. My husband, after having been on a long distance > motorcycle trip returned home tired and hungry, snagged one of the wafers upon > walking into the kitchen and said "I don't like these as much." Well, they > aren't the subtle cookie/wafer the first batch was. However, I think the second > batch would hold up to hypocras in flavor. I don't particularly care for the > texture but then who knows what wafers were really like? I seem to recall a 16th-century French painting reprinted in the Larousse Gastronomique, showing stacks of wafers being carried by a waferer/wafer hawker on skewers; the impression I got from looking at it was that they were, at least at some point in their existence, a bit on the floppy side. There may have been a range between sweet and savory ones (sweet ones do tend to get crisper as they cool), or they may simply have been skewered while warm. Adamantius Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 07:58:00 -0700 From: Anne-Marie Rousseau <acrouss at gte.net> Subject: Re: SC - Adventures with wafers - hi all from Anne-Marie I'd been meaning to tell you guys...at our non-SCA 15th century re-enactment fest we made wafers with great success! we used Adamantius' recipe and tweaking it a bit (less liquid, more flour, etc). We used my cast iron wafer iron over the fire. Yum yum yum! Sorry, I was in the bake house at the time making the days bread, so only got to play with the fire, not the recipe bit, but they were awful fun to make and even funner to eat (the dogs were even happy, since they got the ones that the wind picked up and tossed off the wafer iron). - --AM, who got to make bread every day in the medievally made oven. woo hoo! Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 23:03:06 -0500 From: Stefan li Rous <stefan at texas.net> Subject: SC - Polish wafer recipe (long) Kerri asked about the wafer recipe I mentioned in the new Polish cookbook: > Would you please post the wafer recipe? I've got one more authentic recipe and > one modern one left to try and I'd like more authentic ones. Here it is. It took me a while to scan and convert it. Hope it comes through ok. I have also included the comments that were with the recipe. As mentioned in my earlier message neither the original recipe nor translation are given. Now to order a pizzelle iron so I can try this and the other wafer recipes I have. Stefan - ---------------- >From "Food and Deink in Medieval Poland" by Maria Dembinska. Revised and Adapted by William Woys Weaver. University of Pennsylvania Press 1999. Saffron Wafers (Oplatki Szafranowe) Saffron was more expensive in Gdansk than in Cracow or Lvov during the Middle Ages, which suggests that distance from market source played a key role in determining the cost of such imported goods. A large portion of Polish saffron appears to have come from regions bordering the Black Sea where saffron originated, via Genoese middlemen. Its use in Polish cookery was a mark of high status, so it may seem contradictory that it also was commonly used in foods associated with fasting. Yet saffron wafers were served at the Polish court during meatless days or at the end of the meal with various confections and Malvasia wine. Because they also contained sugar, the wafers were generally made by specialized confectioners and were therefore not only sweet but also expensive. Part of the expense (aside from the saffron and sugar) was high-quality flour, which had to be farina alba cribrata - the finest sort. Another reason for the cost was manufacture, for the art of wafer making is a distinct craft unto itself, and rather tedious. In spite of this, a good wafer baker was said to produce about one thousand wafers a day. Indeed, it was sometimes a specialty of nunneries or monasteries, which derived income from the sale of such goods. Wafers were made with irons ornamented with various patterns that were impressed into the surface of the wafer as it baked. Polish irons were normally round, although rectangular North German and Dutch types were also used in Gdansk and Pomerania.(6) Metal wafer irons are mentioned in several medieval sources and on occasion they are depicted, but none have survived intact. The images were generally religious, and an especially good wafer maker would have several sets of irons on hand to meet the demand of funerals, weddings, and special religious feasts, such as Easter or Christmas, For everyday use, the royal court probably served wafers impressed with the royal coat of arms, or the coat of arms of a special guest if the intention was to flatter or impress. Since sugar absorbs and amplifies flavors, wafers must be made over a smokeless heat source, the most common being a charcoal stove. This technique requires considerable practice because the iron must be turned constantly to keep both halves evenly heated. The iron must be also kept hot while it is being refilled with wafer batter Last, the wafers must be trimmed while they are hot and soft and still in the iron; once cool, they become brittle and break easily. All of this implies speed and a steady hand with a very sharp knife. Having tested this recipe with a wafer iron from the 1500s, I can report that total baking time per wafer should be about 6 minutes, or 3 minutes per side, depending on the type of metal from which the iron is is made (there are several alloys) and its thickness. Accomplished wafer bakers could probably do this in half the time; I was somewhat restrained by the cautious use of antique equipment. 1 cup (250 g) double sifted pastry flour 1 cup (250 g) superfine sugar (white sugar ground to a fine powder, called bar sugar in the United States) 1/4 teaspoon finely ground saffron 4 egg whites 2 to 3 tablespoons (30 to 45 ml) rosewater poppy seed oil Yield: About 30 wafers, depending on the size of the iron Before assembling the ingredients, which should be at room temperature, light a charcoal grill or old-style charcoal stove so that the coals have a good 30 minutes to heat and reduce to embers. Do not use self-lighting charcoal, since this will give the wafers a burned petroleum flavor. Sift together the flour, sugar and saffron three times. Whisk the egg whites until they are stiff and form peaks, then fold them into the dry ingredients. Moisten with rose water so that it forms a thick batter. Heat both sides of the wafer iron (or a pizzelle iron) over the charcoal stove or grill. When evenly hot on both sides, open the iron and grease it liberally. Put some of the batter on one side and let it spread. Slowly close up the iron but do not press hard, just enough to force the batter out to the edges. Turn the iron over the coals often until the batter begins to bubble around the edges, then press tightly and hold it firmly together, turning the iron several times (this will caramelize the sugar and cause the wafer to stiffen). Batter that has run out of the edges can now be trimmed off neatly with a very sharp knife. Once the wafer tests done, the iron can be opened and the wafer removed with the help of a knife. Repeat until all the batter is used. Perfectly made wafers will bake paper-thin and turn out a golden fawn color. Once cool, they can be stored several months in airtight containers. Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 08:01:23 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> Subject: Re: SC - Polish wafer recipe (long) Tollhase1 at aol.com wrote: > I am having a hard time picturing the iron. Is it similar to the campfire > iron things that hamburgers or sealed sandwiches are sometimes cooked in only > smaller? And where could you find such a thing? > > Frederich Fairly similar, except not as deep, so your wafer is much thinner than a grilled cheese sandwich, and with a pattern it stamps into the surface of the wafer. Like the grilling iron you mention, it has two plates hinged together on one edge, with a steel rod sticking out of each plate opposite the hinge, and a wooden handle on each rod. You can lay it flat on the burners of your stove, or hold it over a flame, and pour/spoon a somewhat thick batter (thin ones are too messy; they squirt out around the edges) onto your hot, greased/seasoned irons, close the irons and hold the handles together, rather like a nut cracker. Somewhere along the line you can flip the iron over to brown the other side of your wafer. Various European import stores are good places to find suitable irons, sold as krumkake or pizelle irons. If all else fails there's always Williams-Sonoma, but I wouldn't go there first. Adamantius Date: Sat, 04 Sep 1999 00:18:14 GMT From: kerric at pobox.alaska.net (Kerri Canepa) Subject: SC - Adventures with wafers - part the third (long) Since I haven't seen _Food and Drink in Medieval Poland_ myself yet, I decided to try to get a little more information about the saffron wafers recipe which Stefan so kindly quoted for me. I tracked down the editor of the Middle Ages series for the University of Pennsylvania Press (UPenn Press published _Food and Drink_) to ask a few questions. What follows is our conversation. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >I don't know if this book, recently published by UPenn Press, is considered >part of the Middle Ages series but it seemed a good place to try. > >The book is _Food and Drink in Medieval Poland_, the author is Maria Dembinska >and it was published in 1999. Is there anyway to contact Ms. Dembinska via email? >I'm an amateur food historian and I have some questions concerning one of the >recipes (for Saffron Wafers). In particular, I'd like to see the original Polish recipe >(with a date) and her English translation of it. What's in the book is a modern >adaptation of the original recipe and I'm interested in a translation. > >If she is not available through email but has a physical address, I would appreciate >receiving it. > >Thanks for your help, > >Kerri Canepa - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >Dear Ms. Canepa: > >Maria Dembinska is deceased, but I will forward your message to the book's >editor and adaptor, William Woys Weaver; I'm sure he will be able to answer >your queries. > >With best regards, > >Jerry Singerman - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >Dear Ms. Canepa: > >Below, the response from Will Weaver to your query. The original recipe no >longer survives as such; what he and Dembinska strove to do was to recreate >the recipes as accurately as possible. > >"You might respond to the inquiry this way: The royal accounts >mention saffron wafers often and purchase orders note the basic ingredients >only when the wafers were made "in house." Sometimes they were purchased >from outside the royal castle (probably from a nunnery or a professional >wafer baker). Our only task was to figure out the proportions. Maria >interviewed some elderly nuns from a nunnery at Stary Sacz (I believe) to see >how they made them. There is a Czech medieval mss that shows either a king >or saint holding a wafer iron (11th century I believe--it is depicted in the >wafer book cited in the bibliography). So we had ingredients, we had oral >material, and we had a visual source. We then looked at late medieval and >early renaissance cookery mss to see what the proportions were like. Nearly >all of the recipes were the same, I imagine because there is a very narrow >band one must stay within in order to make the wafer recipe work. Maria was >even convinced many of the recipes copied one another, which is doubtless >true. I do not know what happened to her notes or personal files, but I >suppose I could retrieve an old recipe from an Italian or French source, if >that is what the food historian is looking for." W3 > >I hope this helps. > >Jerry Singerman > >Jerome E. Singerman >Humanities Editor >University of Pennsylvania Press >4200 Pine Street >Philadelphia, PA 19104-4011 > >tel: 215 898-1681 >fax: 215 898-0404 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ So, as you can see, the saffron wafer recipe as given is an interpretation. I'll post my results of this recipe when I next play with it. Kerri Cedrin Etainnighean, OL Date: Sun, 19 Sep 1999 16:18:16 GMT From: kerric at pobox.alaska.net (Kerri Canepa) Subject: Re: SC - poppy seed oil Stefan, >I am planning on trying the saffron wafers in "Food and Drink in Medieval >Poland" tomorrow. In the recipe it calls for poppy seed oil to coat the >wafer iron. Ooh, let me know how the wafers turn out. I haven't had a chance to play with that recipe yet. >All I could find today, in my large specialty store Central Market, and >my regular HRB grocery was olive oil (lots of olive oils), seseme oil, >walnut oil, almond oil and some more modern ones (I assume) such as >safflower oil, peanut oil, sunflower seed oil and some others. > >I bought some almond oil because I thought my first choice, walnut >oil might lend too much nut taste. As this oil is in direct contact >with the wafer, the taste may matter. Can anyone tell me if poppyseed >oil has much of a taste and if so, what it is? Should I use olive oil? >I have no idea if these different oils have different smoke points >and whether it would matter in this application. I've never used poppy seed oil or walnut oil for that matter. I would think that they would impart a slight flavor but if the wafer is flavored with saffron and sugar, then I doubt the oil is going to make that much of an impression. Also, you don't need to use much oil at all or it drips out everywhere. Depending on the olive oil (the more "virgin" and lighter in color it is, the less strongly flavored), you could try it. >The wafer iron does have a non-stick coating. Should I just omit the>oil? That or experiment; do some without and some with oil. It sounds like you have an electric pizzelle maker so I don't think you need to worry too much about the smoking point of oils. It's something I have to take into account since I'm using a hand held over the stove pizzelle maker with less heat control. Using my pizzelle maker I found that after a certain point, no fats were necessary to keep the wafer from sticking. I may have been partially due to the high heat I kept it at, but I couldn't really say for sure. As an aside, this quote from _Food and Drink in Medieval Poland_ >Metal wafer irons are mentioned >in several medieval sources and on occasion they are >depicted, but none have survived intact. I can at least address. While visiting Buonconsiglia Castle in Trento, Italy, there was an iron wafer maker on display (with, of course, no identifying notes or anything) with an heraldic design carved into it. Since the castle had continuous inhabitants until well into the early 19th c, it could have been from any number of time periods. Since the heraldry was of the fellow who was a big honcho during the Council of Trent times, it's likely the iron is from the early to mid 16th c. Yeah, it's not medieval but it is authentic. Kerri Cedrin Etainnighean, OL Date: Sun, 19 Sep 1999 16:10:08 -0700 From: "Morrigan O'Malley" <scribed at cadvision.com> Subject: Re: SC - poppy seed oil >>The wafer iron does have a non-stick coating. Should I just omit the >>oil? When I borrowed a pizzelle maker from an Italian friend of mine, he specifically instructed me _not_ to oil it, as there was more than sufficient oil in the recipe to prevent the wafers from sticking. It wasn't a non-stick kind, but steel. I don't know the recipe being used, but if it has a high oil content, perhaps that would be sufficient? Lemming Cook Flaming Lemming Inn proposed canton of <insert name here> Cross, Montengarde, Avacal, An Tir Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 10:00:36 EDT From: ChannonM at aol.com Subject: Re: SC - Stefan's recent wafer experiment stefan at texas.net writes: << Admantius' recipe definitely is not as sweet as the Polish one and of course, doesn't have the saffron taste. I think I would like it sweeter for a dessert course, but that may not be a medieval thing. I also brushed melted margarine on the iron this time, instead of trying to pour on almond oil. I'm not sure it needed the butter or oil though as I never recoated the iron, but I didn't have any problems with the second or third or fourth wafers sticking. >> I did a feast a few years back and made "A dish of Snowe" and wanted to serve it with wafers as is mentioned in the original recipe. Here is my work on the wafers. The original recipe is found in Le Menagerie de Paris, 1393 Wafers (Gauffres) be made in five ways. By one method you beat up the eggs in a bowl then add salt and wine and throw in flour and mix them, and then put them on two irons, little by little, each time, as much paste as the size of a leche or strip of cheese, and press them between the two irons and cook on both sides and if the iron doth not separate easily from the paste grease it before hand. The third method is that Strained Waffles (Gauffers couleisses) and they be called strained for this reason only, that the paste is clearer and it as it were boiled clear, after theaforesaid manner and onto it one scatters grated cheese and all is mixed together. The fourth method is flour made into a paste with water, salt and wine without either eggs or cheese. Item, the wafer makers make another kind called big sticks (gros bastons) which be made of flour made into a paste with eggs and powdered ginger. My Recipe 8 eggs 1 c sugar 1 c oil 2 1/2 c flour 2/3 c red wine Combine all ingredients. Using a "pizelle" waffle maker (an Italian waffle like cookie press) pour approximately 1/8 cup of batter into the base. Press down and release in about 30 seconds or so. If a pizelle maker is not available you can simply drop batter onto a hot griddle, although the pizelle maker creates a beautiful lace like wafers. I don't own one myself but enquired with all of my Italian friends and their relatives and finally came up with someone who was happy to lend it to me. The results were great. This too did tend to brown, and I thought about using white wine, but the flavour was soooo much better with red. I incorporated the oil into the batter, this relieved any sticking issues and I never had to oil the iron. However, this was a teflon iron, which may have helped although in my early trials, they stuck anyway. In making these waffles for 150 people, the day before, I knew that re-oiling the iron was going to be very time consuming. However the end result was everyone enjoyed them and I was not worse for wear. Hauviette Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 04:39:27 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> Subject: Re: SC - wafers Stefan li Rous wrote: > You cooked the wafers the day before the feast? How did you serve them? Did > you serve them cool? I had gotten the idea that wafers should be served > warm and fresh, so I hadn't considered it workable for a normal SCA feast. Think in terms of how wafers are made, and their overall mass to volume ratio. They cool off pretty quickly, and a wafer iron makes one, or a couple, at a time, and as a period cooking utensil probably was fairly specialized and probably not especially cheap. Then you make them in batches and, as seems to be documented in many cases, go out and hawk them on the street like many another specialty merchant. I don't know they'd have been eaten days old, but I imagine getting them in quantity where all of them are hot off the irons is unlikely. Adamantius Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 08:15:56 EDT From: ChannonM at aol.com Subject: Re: SC - wafers stefan at texas.net writes: << Did your wafers brown in blotches or evenly overall? Yes << You cooked the wafers the day before the feast? ---yes, I kept them in sealed containers << How did you serve them? I placed the "dish of snowe" in the center in a fluffy pile, polished up some pretty red delicious apples, used an apple corer/slicer (makes nice 1/8 wedges ) tied the apple with gold ribbon so it didn't fall apart (I also sprayed the apple with lemon juice/water to prevent browning. This let the feasters see the plate and then untie the ribbon to partake in dipping them into the snowe. The original also calls for sprigs of rosemary, as if this is snow on the branch of an evergreen tree. Then I placed the waffles around the "snowe" and gave a slight sprinkling of confectioners sugar (I know it contains cornstarch, but this was a feast for over 100 people, I didn't take the time to grind superfine sugar) this step can be omitted as it doesn't really follow the original recipe. MMMMMMM! << Did you serve them cool? I had gotten the idea that wafers should be served warm and fresh, so I hadn't considered it workable for a normal SCA feast. >> Yes I served them cool, but I'm not sure how you could serve them hot, unless you flipped them off the grill onto someones lap. They were nice and crunchy when cool. I tried rolling them and didn't have much success. It was also very time consuming, and I weighed the different ideas about presentation and such. There are also commercially available pizelle's here, (Windsor) the recipe is very similar AFAIK except the wine, Did you say you were using a pizelle maker or a regular waffle iron. The pizelle maker produces very thin beautiful lacy stylized cookies . Let me know what you think. Hauviette Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 10:28:55 -0700 From: "Deborah Schumacher" <chicagojo at uswest.net> Subject: RE: SC - wafers When I worked in the Kitchen at the middle kingdoms 12th night 1998, The Feast steward did sweet wafers. We served them on silver trays and they were drizzled with a very simple glaze made of powdered sugar, Grand Manier and orange juice. They had been made ahead of time and were stored in a large tupperware container. They seemed to go over rather well. I'll see if i can email the feast steward for her recipe, I think it was documented, as everything else she did was. (It was my first feast working in a kitchen and somehow i thought they were *all* like that. ) But i would think i would cook them the day before if i could, to save a little time on the day of the feast. Zoe Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 00:43:53 -0500 From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com> Subject: Re: SC - wafers Stefan li Rous wrote: >> You cooked the wafers the day before the feast? How did you serve them? Did >> you serve them cool? I had gotten the idea that wafers should be served >> warm and fresh, so I hadn't considered it workable for a normal SCA feast. and Adamantius answered: >Think in terms of how wafers are made, and their overall mass to volume >ratio. They cool off pretty quickly, and a wafer iron makes one, or a >couple, at a time, and as a period cooking utensil probably was fairly >specialized and probably not especially cheap. Then you make them in >batches and, as seems to be documented in many cases, go out and hawk >them on the street like many another specialty merchant. > >I don't know they'd have been eaten days old, but I imagine getting them >in quantity where all of them are hot off the irons is unlikely. Rufina regularly brings pre-made wafers to the war, and they are fine as long as they stay in a sealed container. If they sit out overnight they tend to get limp. I believe she uses one of Le Menagier's recipes--very tasty, but I don't know the recipe. Elizabeth/Betty Cook Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 13:14:36 -0500 From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> Subject: Re: SC - Re: Wafers "Michael F. Gunter" wrote, about his plans for wafers: > Yes sweet with a sprinkling of powdre douce. > > For a nice sounding savory wafer I recall a wafer made with > fish and cheese that sounded appetizing. As I recall that recipe is in "Take A Thousand Eggs or More", but I could be mistaken, and am unable to check at the moment. Does anybody know? As for savory wafers, yes, cheese versions exist which would probably be ideal, but which may not be completely in keeping with people's expectations (rightly or wrongly) of what a wafer should be: non-sweet wafers tend to be slightly limp and rubbery compared to sweet ones, but I'm not really sure how crisp savory wafers in period were supposed to be. I've seen paintings of wafers skewered on a brochette for portable, commercial sale, and they look as if they were at least, at one time, pretty floppy. Another solution might be to use a "sweet" wafer recipe that uses a minimum of sugar, just as a bare seasoning, rather than a cookie-ish flavoring. I know some of the Carr's brand of crackers or biscuits, for example, commonly eaten with cheese, are sweetened in spite of their being basically a savory cracker, or at least one appropriate for savory accompaniments. The Markham recipe for wafers (he doesn't specify them as sweet or savory, as I recall) calls for flour, egg yolks, rosewater, sugar, and cream; you could probably use only a small amount of sugar and get away with it. Adamantius Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 06:49:24 -0500 From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> Subject: Re: SC - Re: Wafers Stefan li Rous wrote: > > Yes, which is presumably part of why they become more rigid as they cool. > > The sugar is the reason the wafers harden as they cool? Why is this? Is > the sugar softer or liquid when they come off the iron? Or is there > something else taking place that I'm not aware of? Probably moisture in the form of steam, which is more easily and quickly released from a hot wafer once it's been removed from the iron, and sugar, which is generally more fluid when warm than when cold, are the main issues. You know how honey will run almost like water when it's heated? Sugar, even in solid form at the start, will melt or at least soften when hot. There may be a gluten thing happening too, whereby proteins coagulate when hot, but then get still firmer when cold, which many of us with children will experience over our (or our children's) morning egg. For that matter, most wafers also contain egg, which has proteins of its own in addition to gluten. There are probably other factors as well, but _in general_ cooked doughs reach maximum firmness when fresh, but cooled after cooking. I'm not just referring to dessication or staleness. Adamantius Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 10:47:48 -0600 From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US> Subject: RE: SC - Re: Wafers > The sugar is the reason the wafers harden as they cool? Why is this? Is > the sugar softer or liquid when they come off the iron? Or is there > something else taking place that I'm not aware of? > > Lord Stefan li Rous Barony of Bryn Gwlad Kingdom of Ansteorra Sugar is a water soluble, crystalline compound. It changes to a liquid state when sufficiently heated, often forming molecular chains which become rigid on cooling, which is why cookies are soft coming out of the oven, and harden as they cool. Sugar is mildly hygroscopic and the baking process removes excess moisture leaving it more so. Cookies, wafers, etc. absorb atmospheric moisture and soften over time. Bear Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 20:04:15 EST From: ChannonM at aol.com Subject: SC - Re: Dishe of Snowe, LONG As I had a few requests for the recipe, I'll post it here for anyone who would like it. Hauviette The 'main work' herein after referred to is: A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye, 16 Century, edited by Catherine Frances Frere, Cambridge; W. Heffer & Sons Ltd, 1913, Found in Cariadoc's Miscellany Sixth dish:A Dish of Snowe with French Wafers Original Recipe- Main work page 25 To Make a Dyschefull of Snowe Take a pottel of swete thycke creame and the whytes of eyghte egges, and beate them altogether wyth a spone, then putte them in youre creame and a saucerfull of Rosewater, and a dyshe full of Suger wyth all, then take a stycke and make it cleane, and then cutte it in the ende foure square, and therwith beate all the aforesayde thynges together and ever as it ryseth take it of and put it into a Collaunder, this done take one apple and set it in the myddes of it and a thicke bushe of Rosemary, and set it inn the myddes of the platter, then cast your Snowe uppon the Rosemarye and fyll your platter therewith. And yf you have wafers caste some in wyth all and thus serve them forthe. Redacted Recipe take 2 quarts of cream, 8 egg whites, a 1/4 cup of rosewater, 1 cup of sugar and beat the cream with a wisk and the eggs, rose water and sugar.Mix them with the cream. Place an apple and a sprig of rosemary in the centre of a platter and surround with the mixture. If you have wafers, place some in the dish and serve. Modern Version : Serves 8 1/2 pint whipping cream 1 egg white 2 tsp rosewater 1/4 cup sugar Beat the egg white and slowly add the sugar until stiff peaks form. Beat the whipping cream and rose water until stiff. Blend the two gently with a folding motion. Refridgerate until used. French Wafers The original recipe is found in Le Menagerie de Paris, 1393 Wafers (Gauffres) be made in five ways. By one method you beat up the eggs in a bowl then add salt and wine and throw in flour and mix them, and then put them on two irons, little byb little, each time, as much paste as the size of a leche or strip of cheese, and press them between the two irons and cook on both sides and if the iron doth not separate easily from the paste grease it before hand. The third method is that Strained Waffles (Gauffers couleisses) and they be called strained for this reason only, that the paste is clearer and it as it were boiled clear, after theaforesaid manner and onto it one scatters grated cheese and all is mixed together. The fourth method is flour made into a paste with water, salt and wine without either eggs or cheese. Item, the wafer makers make another kind called big sticks (gros bastons) which be made of flour made into a paste with eggs and powdered ginger. Modern Recipe based on "pizelle recipe" see below 8 eggs 1 c sugar 1 c oil 2 1/2 c flour 2/3 c red wine Combine all ingredients. Using a "pizelle" waffle maker (an Italian waffle like cookie press) pour approximately 1/8 cup of batter into the base. Press down and release in about 30 seconds or so. If a pizelle maker is not available you can simply drop batter onto a hot griddle, although the pizelle maker creates a beautiful lace like wafers. I don't own one myself but inquired with all of my Italian friends and their elderly relatives and finally came up with someone who was happy to lend it to me. The results were great. Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 17:57:49 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeff Heilveil <heilveil at uiuc.edu> Subject: SC - Waffles and Books Was hunting in the library today and found some interesting books... The Art of Dining by Sara Paston-Williams. It was originally published by the national trust enterprises ltd. in 1993 and is destributed in the US by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. I REALLY like what I have seen of this one so far. She gives the original, along with the source right in the open (along with the date written for those of us who can never remember) and then her redactions (which aren't that great, but the original is there) and any pictures she has found that are relevant. She also talks about dining practices, but I just got home from work and haven't looked at it yet. The book also covers some post-period confections and beverages, but she is real clear about giving dates. However, there is a picture there that is intruiging... "A dutch kitchen scene by Joachim de Beukelae painted in the 1550s" so there's this tray of waffles, and a long handled waffle-iron like you could purchase for camping... Didn't know waffles were period. It doesn't look like pastilles (SP), just rectangles with a grid on it like a... waffle. Do we have any period recipes for the batter? Looks like they are eating flounder too, or at least some other flattened fish with both eyes on top of the head... There's also a loaf of bread with some need oval shapes pressed into it. The two other books I found I'll have to translate out of German, but I will try to get a recipe or two done from one of them each day (err, well, I did say I would TRY). The one I am starting with is Kuchenmeysterey (Passau: Johann Petri, um 1486) By Rolf Ehnert. It's a small book, but a facsimile of the Kuchenmeysterey with an afterword. copywrite 1981. The other is Wildu machen ayn guet essen.... by Doris Aichholzer. Published by Peter Lang. copywrite 1999. Bogdan _______________________________________________________________________________ Jeffrey Heilveil M.S. Ld. Bogdan de la Brasov, C.W. Department of Entomology A Bear's paw and base vert on field argent University of Illinois Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 09:45:26 +0200 From: "Cindy M. Renfrow" <cindy at thousandeggs.com> Subject: Re: SC - Waffles and Books IIRC, Le Menagier gives several recipes for 'crisps' batter. Waffles, wafers, crisps, whatever you want to call them are very old. Cindy Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 08:07:04 -0600 From: Serian <serian at uswest.net> Subject: Re: SC - Waffles and Books I researched waffles/wafers because I have an old family recipe. I didn't find any batters like modern waffle batter, but Le Menagier has 4. I've made one of them which has cheese and red wine in them. They're quite good. Serian Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 14:23:14 -0600 From: Serian <serian at uswest.net> Subject: Re: SC - Waffles and Books One common way of serving wafers/waffles is with hippocras and things like candied anise seeds and sugared almonds. Check out Le menagier online. Most of the meals mention hypocras and wafers. Serian http://www.best.com/%7Eddfr/Medieval/Cookbooks/Menagier/Menagier.html Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 10:49:53 -0500 From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com> Subject: Re: SC - Waffles and Books At 9:45 AM +0200 6/30/00, Cindy M. Renfrow wrote: >IIRC, Le Menagier gives several recipes for 'crisps' batter. Waffles, >wafers, crisps, whatever you want to call them are very old. > >Cindy I think there are three different things here: 1. Funnel cakes (the Two Fifteenth Century Crispes, and various other things elsewhere, such as mincebek in _Two Anglo Norman_. ) 2. Wafers (served with hippocras in Menagier): Presumably waffle pattern, but more like a crisp cookie, at least as I have seen them made. 3. Modern waffles: Waffle pattern, but thick with a pancake like texture. Off hand, I am not sure I have seen anything that is clearly made like a modern waffle. One thing worth checking is whether there are any surviving wafer irons, and if so if the separation between the plates is thin, as in a modern wafer iron, or thick, as in a waffle iron. David/Cariadoc http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 16:35:19 -0400 (EDT) From: alysk at ix.netcom.com Subject: SC - Waffles, Turkey, and Trifle Greetings. Recently, there were posts (if my feeble brain recalls correctly) about period documentation for waffles, turkey and trifle. While bumming around during my vacation I came across some of each and thought I'd post in case there still was interest - or it hadn't been settled. Waffles are pictured in a book I found at Borders, _Bruegel_ by Keith Roberts (on sale for $5.99). Bruegel was active in the last half of the 1500s. There are a minimum of two pictures, one with several representations. The waffles are clearly thick, clearly gridded, and rectangular or square. One very rectangular grouping is carried in the hatband of the person pictured. "The Fight between Carnival and Lent" (1559) shows four depictions and has the ones tied onto the hat. The other painting is "The Gloomy Day (February)", 1565, and depicts a man eating a waffle. <snip of turkey info - see turkeys-msg> <snip of trifle info - see dessert-msg> Alys Katharine Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 14:03:44 +1000 From: "Craig Jones." <craig.jones at airservices.gov.au> Subject: SC - Wafer recipes >Drake commented: >> If you can get your hands on a wafer iron, I have a great "coeliac friendly" >> saffron wafer recipe. > >Please post this! I'd love to have another wafer recipe. Is this, even >better, a period recipe? The only other "saffron" wafer recipe I have >is from the Polish cookbook discussed here recently. And I never got >it to stick together in one piece. Lots of crumbly, good tasting, pretty >fragments. But a pain to clean off the wafer iron and not exactly >a "wafer". Um, O dear. That was the recipe I used!!! I just modified it so it used Rice flour instead. Spank me for being naughty and modifying a period recipe for my nefarious purposes. I found the wafers crumbly too but the recipe is skewed wrong so it ends up with the wrong consistancy. Wafer batter should be stiff like waffle batter. I can look at the recipe tonight if you wish... Did you lightly brush the iron with butter? I also found that no matter how little a dollop I put in the middle, I also got mixture squirting out the side and I noticed that there are two ways of cooking the wafer. 1) Put a dollop of batter on and press down really quick and hard. Makes a very thin wafer. 2) Put a dollop of batter on, wait 20-30 secs and press down slowly for a thicker wafer (and not so much shooting out the side). Works for looser batters. What kind of wafer maker do you have? I have one of the swedish cast iron ones with a scroll pattern. I produces a 4-in diameter circular wafer. My pelican has about 3, handed down to her from her Norwegian Mother. Cheers, Drake. ps. Anyone else out there have a wafer iron and some funky wafer recipes. How common was it to serve wafers at a feast? pps. At Lochac's Midwinter, I spent all Sunday morning cranking out Rosewater wafers. They were a huge hit. We actually had 6 year old, in total gales of tears. When asked by two ladies, he said 'I didn't get a pancake'. After being regaled of this story as we were cleaning up, I cranked out a small batch of batter and made him a couple. Never seen a set of eyes light up when he was presnted with 3 'pancakes' just for him. A magical moment (which are rare for me in the SCA these days). Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 10:20:51 -0400 From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> Subject: Re: SC - Wafer recipes "Craig Jones." wrote: > >> I also found that no matter how little a dollop I put in the middle, I also > >> got mixture squirting out the side and I noticed that there are two ways of > >> cooking the wafer. > > > >Yes, I sometimes had that problem. I thought I could become expert enough > >to drop just the exact size dollop of batter in just the exact spot on > >the wafer iron to prevent the overflow. I never did. > > Must be some secret ninja technique to it. As the knight's have there "13 > secret Knight Shots", I'm sure there are 13 secret cooking laurel techniques. > Maybe have X ml of the dough loaded into a syringe and apply it to the direct > center (measured with some secret quantum device) might work... At the risk of incurring the enmity of Certain Kingdoms' Laurel Councils for breaking the Confidentiality of the Order, (but we know it ain't the People's Republic of the Eastrealm because we'd never have anything so formal as a Laurel Council, we're more of a Free Trayned Bande of Insurrectionists) I will reveal to the select few this secret cooking laurel technique: Place your dollop of batter on your bottom iron just off-center, by perhaps ten percent of the total diameter of the iron, in the direction of the hinge. Assuming you have the right amount, and only you can determine what that is after a few trial runs (Napoleon is said to have claimed the first crepe was always the property of the cat, this is a similar deal), the action of closing the iron will push the main mass of the batter away from the hinge and back toward the center. Ultimately, though, the trick is to practice, observe during and between trial attempts and adjust accordingly. Like archery, where you sometimes have to calibrate by seeing how far off target your sight mark puts your arrow, you then figure the spatial relationship between the calculated mark and the real thing, and hold your bow accordingly. If your wafer batter is dropped in the wrong place, resulting in batter shooting out one side instead of filling the irons, place the next dollop a bit away from that edge, and remember that everything will move, to some extent, when you close the irons. Of course, this can be difficult to do correctly when you're making a dozen wafers, or even two, but if we're going to worry about getting professional results every time, we should bear in kind that a professional, town waferer, the guys crying their wares out on the streets, with hundreds of wafers stuck on a big skewer, made them for hours for many days running, possibly every day of the year, or most of them. The closest most of us can get is to make them for a large event, expecting the first several of the several hundred to be a little wonky, the ones in the middle to be almost or functionally perfect, and perhaps the last few becoming increasingly weird as the fatigue factor sets in. > >> 1) Put a dollop of batter on and press down really quick and hard. Makes a > >> very thin wafer. > >> 2) Put a dollop of batter on, wait 20-30 secs and press down slowly for a > >> thicker wafer (and not so much shooting out the side). Works for looser > >> batters. > > > >Interesting idea. I'll have to consider trying these two and see how it > >works. I was afraid to let it sit too long and usually closed it as soon > >as I got a good dollop on each wafer area. > > Just a few seconds. I'm also using a manual iron that I sit either on an open > fire or on a trivet onto of my gas stove at home. Yeah, that's what I use, too. If it works, it works, and this applies both to equipment and method. > >Apparently it has not been uncommon in the East Kingdom. I don't know if > >it has > >ever been done at an Ansteorran feast. And I have only done it for a > >Yule pot > >luck local feast and for the Royalty and entourage at a small luncheon. > >I'd like > >to spread the idea around some in Ansteorra. It was apparently fairly common > >at some period feasts. > > > >I never got the savory recipe to work either. If anyone has a recipe for a > >savory (ie: with cheese) wafer recipe that has worked for them, I'd like to > >get it. The East used to have a radically different set of site-availability dynamics than a lot of places, I gather, and when I first joined the SCA (the time I stayed, that is) in 1982, we used to have a lot of evening dessert revels. Wafers with snow (sometimes made by cheaters who would simply substitute whipped cream for snow) used to be an old standby in areas where specific people Had A Wafer Iron. We actually used to contact people around the Kingdom and ask them to bring 600 wafers to Twelfth Night. Come to think of it, we still do. > I'm gonna work on the cheese and red wine wafer recipe till I get it right... FWIW, I've f