Waffle

• 1. Introduction

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  Pieter Bruegel painted waffles in the 16th century with such care that their squares can be counted, twelve across and seven down. A waffle is a dish of batter or dough, usually leavened, cooked between two plates. The plates are patterned to stamp a characteristic size, shape and surface onto the food. Waffles are eaten throughout the world, and Belgium alone has over a dozen regional varieties. Some are made fresh. Others are baked commercially, then packaged and sold fresh or frozen.

  So where did that grid come from, and who first thought to add yeast? Why does a food stamped by hot iron turn up in so many different forms, from Hawaii to Hong Kong? And how did a medieval street-vendor treat end up as a staple of the modern kitchen?

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• 2. Names And Irons

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  The English word waffle first appears in print in 1725, in a recipe that begins "Waffles. Take flower, cream...." That printing was Court Cookery by Robert Smith. The word comes straight from the Dutch wafel, which descends from the Middle Dutch wafele.

  The French walfre of 1185 is older than the Middle Dutch form, which is first recorded at the end of the 13th century. Both trace back to the Frankish wafla, meaning honeycomb or cake. Across Europe the word took many forms, including gaufre, waufre, vaffel and våffla.

  The food itself is far older than the word. In ancient times, the Greeks cooked flat cakes called obelios between hot metal plates. In medieval Europe, similar cakes of flour, water or milk, and often eggs, were known as wafers. Cooks baked them over an open fire between iron plates with long handles.

  Around the 9th and 10th centuries, two kinds of iron emerged together. One kind made communion wafers, and the other made oublies. Communion irons typically carried images of Jesus and his crucifixion. The oublie irons showed lighter Biblical scenes or simple emblematic designs, and they were almost always round and considerably larger.

  In its basic form, the oublie held only grain flour and water, just like the communion wafer. Flavorings such as orange blossom water arrived in the 11th century, when the Crusades brought new ingredients to Western Europe. Honey and other local flavorings may have been used even earlier.

  Oublies received that name around the year 1200 and spread through northwestern continental Europe. In 1270 the makers formed a guild, the oublieurs. They baked many light pastries besides oublies, including the waffles that were about to appear.

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• 3. Recipes On Paper

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  In the late 14th century, an anonymous husband wrote a manuscript called Le Ménagier de Paris as a set of instructions for his young wife. It holds the earliest known waffle recipe. Beat eggs in a bowl, season with salt, add wine, and toss in flour. Fill two irons at a time, a little at a time, and cook both sides. If the dough sticks, wipe the iron first with a cloth soaked in oil or grease.

  The manuscript gives three more versions of the same idea. Cheese is placed between two layers of batter, grated into the batter, or left out. Because none of these recipes contained leavening, this was a waffle only in name.

  It was in the 15th century that the waffle truly began to separate from the oublie. Many of the irons being made took a new shape. Some were fashioned as rectangles like the communion wafer iron, and some round oublie irons were cut down to make rectangles. A French fer à oublie and a Belgian wafelijzer from this period both show the classic grid, though only shallowly engraved. Deeper gridded irons were soon to become common across Belgium.

  The second known waffle recipe, Om ghode waffellen te backen, comes from the Dutch manuscript KANTL 15, dated to about 1500-1560. For the first time it gave partial measurements, called for sugar, and put spices straight into the batter. The mixture was grated white bread, an egg yolk and a spoonful of sugar. It was thinned with half water and half wine, then flavored with ginger and cinnamon.

  Groote Wafelen, from the Belgian cookbook Een Antwerps kookboek, is attributed to either the 16th or the 17th century. It was the first recipe to use leavening, in the form of beer yeast. The cook mixed white flour, warm cream, melted butter and yeast, then added ten or twelve egg yolks. Cheaper versions could use egg white and plain milk. The dough sat by the fireplace for four hours to rise.

  Before this point, unleavened dough cooked easily in thin oublie irons. Leavened dough needed deeper ones, and Joachim de Beuckelaer painted just such irons in his own century. Groote Wafelen is the genesis of the contemporary waffle. By the middle of that century, the French court had taken notice.

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• 4. Sugar, Kings And Law

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  King François I of France, it was said, loved waffles so much that he had a set of irons cast in pure silver. His successor Charles IX passed the first waffle legislation in 1560. Quarrels and fights had been breaking out between oublieurs, so the law required them to stand at least four yards apart.

  By the 17th century, ordinary citizens ate waffles and oublies that were unsweetened or sweetened only with honey, and often made from grains other than wheat. Wheat and sugar-sweetened versions existed across Europe but cost too much for anyone except the monarchy and the bourgeoisie. Even the Dutch, who controlled much of the mid-century sugar trade, valued a kilogram of sugar at half an ounce of silver. Elsewhere in Europe it fetched twice the price of opium.

  Wealthier families ate waffles known as mestiers. They were smaller and thinner than common waffles, made with egg yolks, sugar, the finest flour and white wine, and served like dessert pastry.

  At the dawn of the 18th century, expanding Caribbean plantations cut the price of sugar in half. Recipes multiplied and grew lavish. Menon's gaufre in Nouveau Traité de la Cuisine called for a livre of sugar to every demi-livre of flour.

  Germany led in developing and publishing waffle recipes during that century. German cooks introduced coffee waffles, Hefeweizen beer yeast, cardamom, nutmeg and a number of Zuickerwaffeln, or sugar waffles. The French added whipped egg whites, lemon zest, Spanish wine and cloves. Joseph Gillier published the first chocolate waffle recipe, which mixed three ounces of grated chocolate into the batter before cooking.

  Many recipes took names from a country, region or city, such as Schwedische Waffeln and Gauffres à l'Allemande. Most famous was Gauffres à la Flamande, first recorded in 1740, also known as Flemish waffles or Gaufres de Lille. It was the first French recipe to use beer yeast. Louis-Auguste de Bourbon published it in Le Cuisinier Gascon, calling for fifteen egg whites and a livre of butter, plus a little brewer's yeast. The cook rubbed the hot iron with butter wrapped in cloth and finished the waffles with sugar and orange blossom water.

  That Flemish recipe is the oldest named waffle still in popular use, and the firm Meert produces it regionally and commercially today. Another 18th-century waffle, from Liège, has a far murkier paper trail.

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• 5. Contested Origins

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  The Liège waffle is supposed to have been invented in the 18th century by the chef to the prince-bishop of Liège. Yet no German, French, Dutch or Belgian cookbook of that period mentions it under any name. No recipe of the time uses its signature ingredients, a brioche-based dough and pearl sugar.

  The paper trail begins in 1814, when Antoine Beauvilliers published a recipe in l'Art du Cuisiner with brioche dough as the base. He scattered crushed block sugar, called sucre cassé, on top rather than working it in. In 1822 the famous Parisian pastry chef Antonin Carême became the first to put gros sucre into several waffle variations, in Le Maitre d'Hotel Français. Leblanc followed in 1834 with a complete recipe for gaufres grêlées, or hail waffles, with gros sucre mixed through. A full Gaufre de Liège recipe did not appear until 1921.

  The finished waffle is richer, denser, sweeter and chewier than its rivals. It comes from the Wallonia region in eastern Belgium and is also called gaufres de chasse, or hunting waffles. Chunks of pearl sugar caramelize on the outside as it bakes. It is the most common waffle in Belgium, sold plain, vanilla or cinnamon by street vendors across the country.

  The Brussels waffle has a similar tangle of claims. Versions with whipped and folded egg whites, baked in large rectangular forms, date from the 18th century. The oldest recognized reference to Gaufres de Bruxelles by name belongs to Florian Dacher, a Swiss baker in Ghent, in 1842 or 1843. He had earlier worked under pastry chefs in central Brussels. Philippe Édouard Cauderlier later published the recipe in the 1874 edition of La Pâtisserie et la Confiture.

  Maximilien Consael, another Ghent chef, claimed to have invented the waffle in 1839. No written record shows him naming or selling it until the 1856 Brussels Fair. Neither man created the recipe. They popularized and formalized one that already existed.

  The result is lighter and crisper than other European waffles, with larger pockets and rectangular sides. It uses egg whites, yeast, traditionally an ale yeast, or sometimes both. Belgian vendors usually serve it warm under confectioner's sugar, and in tourist areas it may carry whipped cream, soft fruit or chocolate spread. Dacher's formalized recipe became the predecessor of the American "Belgian" waffle.

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• 6. Beet Sugar To Belgian

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  In 1806 a British naval blockade of the Atlantic sharply inflated the price of sugar. Waffles stayed popular in Europe anyway for the first half of the 19th century. Commercial beet sugar production on the continent was driving the price toward historic lows. By the middle of that century, stroopwafels had risen to prominence in the Netherlands.

  Then cheap beet sugar became widely available in the second half of the 1800s. Pastries, candies and chocolates reached the middle class as never before, and waffles lost ground rapidly. By the early 20th century, waffle recipes had become rare in cookbooks. Only 29 professional oublieurs remained in Paris.

  Waffles were moving from the street vendor to the home kitchen. In 1918, the US company General Electric introduced its first electric commercial waffle maker. By the mid-1930s, several companies were selling dry pancake and waffle mix, including Aunt Jemima and Bisquick. So did three brothers named Dorsa from San Jose, California. The Dorsas went on to pioneer commercial frozen waffles, sold from 1953 under the name Eggo. Manufacturers are now testing potato starch, which makes waffles more stable and keeps them from sticking to the iron.

  Belgian-style waffles were showcased at Expo 58 in Brussels. Another Belgian introduced them to the United States at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. They only really took hold at the 1964 New York World's Fair, where a Belgian entrepreneur sold "Bel-Gem" waffles. The name came from that brand, which the Brussels-born vendor Maurice Vermersch promoted.

  Belgian waffles are a simplified Brussels waffle, typically leavened with baking soda, though some are yeast-raised. Their irons are 1 ½ inches deep, which separates them from standard American waffles. The American "Belgian" waffle is really a hybrid of existing American waffle types and some Belgian attributes.

  Wafel frolics, waffle parties held in New Jersey, were documented as early as 1744. The Dutch had earlier established waffles in New Amsterdam, now New York City. Standard American waffles are denser and thinner than Belgian ones and are usually leavened with baking powder. Cooks fold in pecans, chocolate drops or berries, and shape them round, square or rectangular.

  Americans serve them as a sweet breakfast with butter and maple syrup, bacon, fruit syrups, honey or powdered sugar. They also turn up in savory dishes such as fried chicken and waffles, or topped with kidney stew, and as desserts under ice cream. The chain Waffle House, with over 1,900 locations, is ubiquitous in the southern United States. Elsewhere, cooks were pouring entirely different batters into similar irons.

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• 7. Street Food Inventions

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  In Hong Kong, street hawkers sell a waffle called the "grid cake" or "grid biscuit", written 格仔餅. It is larger than a traditional waffle, round, and divided into four quarters. Vendors spread butter, peanut butter and sugar on one side, then fold it into a semicircle to eat warm. Eggs, sugar and evaporated milk make it sweet, soft and rich in yolk flavor. Flavors such as chocolate and honey melon give it different colors. A cousin, the eggette or gai daan jai, written 鷄蛋仔, has a ball-shaped pattern.

  Pandan waffles from Vietnam get their spring green color from pandan flavoring, with coconut milk in the batter. When cooked, the outside browns and crisps while the inside stays green and chewy. They are typically eaten plain. They are cheap, so children love them. Vendors make them in cast iron molds heated with charcoal or in electric irons.

  Kue gapit comes from West Java in Indonesia. It is a dry snack made generally from tapioca flour. Its name comes from the way it is grilled between iron molds like a waffle, and it comes in a variety of shapes and flavors.

  In 1934 the KC Drive Inn in Hawaii first served the hotdog waffle. The owner was the Japanese American Jiro Asato, who later legally changed his name to KC Jiro Asato. A hotdog is cooked inside the batter, giving an oblong middle section surrounded by flattened square edges. Customers ate it plain or with ketchup, mustard and pickle relish. The idea spread to the continental United States, the Philippines, then an American colony, and the rest of the Pacific Islands. It remains an iconic part of Hawaiian culture, though it has waned elsewhere in the US.

  In the Philippines the hotdog waffle stayed a street food. Filipino versions are more uniformly cylindrical, with a grid pattern, and usually come on bamboo skewers. Fillings include ham, bacon, longganisa, tuna and cheese, or sweet choices such as ube, chocolate and yema custard. The Filipino chain Waffle Time, founded in 1998, specializes in them. In Thailand and the rest of Southeast Asia, they are served with ketchup, mayonnaise or both.

  The croffle bakes croissant dough in a waffle pan and is eaten with ice cream or maple syrup. It is a popular dessert in Korea, and jokes online called it "the greatest invention of the COVID-19 Age". Toppings include basil, corn and cheese, and it is easy to make at home. According to the Irish newspaper Dublin Gadget, reporting on the 20th of July 2017, the baker Louise Lenox first created a croffle at the cafe Le Petit Parisian on Camden Street in Dublin.

  The chaffle, made from eggs and cheese, replaces buns in low-carb diets. It shows how far the waffle iron has traveled from its flour-and-water origins.

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• 8. Northern Tables

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  Scandinavian waffles are thin and cooked in a round iron. Their batter contains no sugar. The most common style is a heart-shaped slice with a sweet topping such as cream or jam. In Norway, brunost and gomme are popular toppings, and some people prefer a salted style, such as blue cheese, as with crêpes.

  In Finland, savory toppings are uncommon, and jam, sugar, whipped cream or vanilla ice cream are usual. In Iceland, the traditional topping is rhubarb or blueberry jam with whipped cream on top. Syrup and chocolate spread are popular substitutes for the jam.

  In the German region of Bergisches Land, the Bergische waffle is always heart-shaped, crisp and less dense than a Belgian waffle. On Sundays it is part of the traditional afternoon feast, served with cherries, cream and optionally rice pudding.

  Stroopwafels come from the Dutch city of Gouda. The stiff batter of flour, butter, brown sugar, yeast, milk and eggs is shaped into medium-sized balls and baked on the iron. While the waffle is still warm, it is cut into two halves. A warm syrup filling is spread between them and glues them together. They are popular in the Netherlands and Belgium and sold pre-packaged in shops and markets.

  In Piedmont, Italy, gofri are light and crispy waffles in sweet and savory versions. According to the most ancient recipe, they contain no egg or milk. Central Italian cuisine has waffle-like cookies called pizzelle, ferratelle in Abruzzo and cancelle in Molise. In Belgium, the galettes campinoises, or Kempense galetten, are rigid and crunchy but buttery, crumbly and soft in the mouth.

  Sweden's waffle tradition dates back at least to the 15th century. Toppings include strawberry, bilberry, cloudberry and raspberry jam, sugar and butter, vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. Savory choices include salmon roe, cold-smoked salmon and crème fraîche. The Annunciation falls on the 25th of March, nine months before Christmas. Its name, Vårfrudagen or Our Lady's Day, sounds like Våffeldagen, or waffle day, so Swedes give the waffle its own holiday on that date.

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