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Breakfast

Newport Waffles

A batter of Indian meal, flour, eggs, butter, salt, baking soda, buttermilk or sour cream, baked in a waffle iron.

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 batter

  1. Prepare 1 pint of Indian meal into mush as usual.

  2. Let the mush cool.

  3. Stir in 1 tablespoon of butter and 2 teaspoons of coarse sea salt while the mush is hot.

  4. Beat the whites and yolks of 4 eggs until very light.

  5. Add the beaten eggs to the cooled mush.

  6. Gradually mix in 1 quart of all-purpose flour.

  7. Dissolve ½ teaspoon of baking soda in ½ pint of buttermilk or sour cream.

  8. Add the dissolved mixture to the batter.

  9. Adjust the batter to a thin consistency with sweet milk as needed.

Bake

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

  2. Butter the waffle irons thoroughly.

  3. Fill the irons half full with batter.

  4. Bake quickly over a brisk fire.

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

Indian meal
Forms the mush that gives the waffles their corn-based body and texture.
Eggs
Whipped whites and yolks add lift and structure to the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides gluten-based structure so the waffles hold their shape.
Buttermilk or sour cream
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the waffles rise and brown.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the buttermilk or sour cream to produce gas for rising.
Butter
Adds richness and helps prevent sticking and browning on the irons.

The step that matters

Preheat the waffle irons for an hour before baking. Hot irons set the outside of the batter quickly, so the waffles crisp and release cleanly instead of sticking or steaming through.

“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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