Waffles (the Williams family cook's)

History

"Dishes & Beverages of the Old South" (1913) heads this recipe "Waffles: (Mammy's.)" The method separates three eggs and beats yolks and whites very light, then builds the batter on the yolks with a pint of very rich sweet milk and handfuls of sifted flour added alternately, "enough to make a batter rather thicker than cream," with scant half-teaspoon of salt and half a cup of lard or lard and butter melted just to running. The beaten whites go in last. Her handling notes are the practical kind: the irons should be "hot but not scorching," greased with melted lard — not butter, because "the salt in butter will make the batter stick" — and the waffles cooked quickly without burning, served on a hot plate with a pitcher of melted butter to pour over.

"Mammy" was the author's word, not a name. Throughout the volume McCulloch-Williams credits her white contributors by name — Betsy Vaughn, Leslie Fox, Aunt Polly Rives, Dorothy Dix — while the Black woman who ran her family's kitchen and taught her to cook appears only by a household role-title, never replaced with a name anywhere in the book. Food historians have documented this as a convention of early-twentieth-century Southern cookbooks, in which Black cooks were credited as generic figures rather than named individuals. Foodymology titles the recipe for the cook and keeps the book's original heading here in the record.

McCulloch-Williams was a white writer born near Clarksville, Tennessee, who grew up on a plantation in the years before the Civil War. Her book's dedication reads, "So here's to our Mammys — God bless them! God rest them! This imperfect chronicle of the nurture wherewith they fed us is inscribed with love to their memory," and its opening argues that being "the best fed people in the world" let "we of the South Country... put up the best fight in history, and after the ravages and ruin of civil war, come again to our own." That framing is the source's own and goes unexamined in it; the cooking it records is largely the work of the enslaved and formerly enslaved women it declines to name.

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 1 pint sweet milk
• flour
• 0.5 teaspoon salt
• 0.5 cup lard or lard and butter mixed

Instructions

1. Separate the eggs, beating yolks and whites very light separately.
2. Add to the yolks alternately a pint of very rich sweet milk and handfuls of sifted flour, mixing until the batter is rather thicker than cream. Stir in the scant half teaspoon of salt and the half cup of melted lard (or lard and butter mixed), stirring well.
3. Fold in the beaten egg whites.
4. Heat the waffle irons hot but not scorching. Grease them well with melted lard—note that salt in butter will make the batter stick.
5. Cook the waffles quickly but carefully to avoid burning. Lay each cooked waffle on a hot plate. Have melted butter ready to pour over each waffle. Layer the second waffle upon the first with butter between, and keep hot. Accumulate at least six waffles on the plate before serving begins.
6. Serve with strong clear coffee and broiled chicken as accompaniments. Syrup may be offered, but the author warns against drenching the waffles with it.