Wafers

Original Recipe

          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 til 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. (Markham)

  (Myers)

Modern Recipe Interpretation

·         ½ cup flour

·         1/3 cup flour

·         1 egg yolk

·         1 Tbsp rose water

·         3 Tbsp sugar

·         Pinch cinnamon

·         Pinch salt

Mix ingredients together well.  Spoon out into a wafer maker and cook to desired doneness.  The wafers will keep for weeks in a sealed, airtight container. (Myers)

History

            “Wafer comes from Old Norman French waufre and French gaufre.  Both words had the sense of honeycomb, and confections bearing that name, including wafers and waffles, are duly so patterned to this day… Le Menagerie, about 1393, gives several recipes: one calls for adding flour, wine, and salt to beaten eggs and placing dough in the amount of ‘a slice of cheese’ between the heated irons.” (Hess)

           

Works Cited

Hess, Karen.  Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery.  1995.  Columbia University Press:

New York, NY.  P. 154.

“Modernizing Markham.” https://modernizingmarkham.com/2010/12/14/wafers.  30 March

2019.

Myers, Daniel.  “Wafers.”  http://medievalcookery.com/recipes/wafers.html.  30 March 2019.