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Dessert

Newport Waffles

A waffle made with Indian meal, butter, salt, eggs, flour, buttermilk or sour cream, baking soda, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Newport Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mush

  1. Prepare the Indian meal into mush as usual.

  2. While hot, stir in the butter and salt, then set aside to cool.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately until very light.

  2. Combine the eggs with the cooled mush, then gradually mix in the flour.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the buttermilk or sour cream, then add to the mixture.

  4. Adjust the batter to a thin consistency with sweet milk.

Bake the waffles

  1. Preheat the waffle irons for an hour before baking.

  2. Butter the irons thoroughly and bake the waffles quickly, filling the irons only halfway.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped separately, they lighten the batter and add structure as the waffles set.
All-purpose flour
Provides gluten structure that holds the waffles together.
Buttermilk or sour cream
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the waffles rise and turn tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk or sour cream to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Indian meal
Cornmeal gives the waffles their corn flavor and a slightly coarse, crisp texture.

The step that matters

Filling the irons only halfway. Batter expands as it bakes, so overfilling spills out and bakes unevenly. Preheating the irons and buttering them well helps the waffles release cleanly and brown evenly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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