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Dessert

Newport Waffles

A waffle made from 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 1 pint of Indian meal into mush as usual.

  2. While hot, stir in a small lump of butter and 2 teaspoons of coarse sea salt.

  3. Set the mush aside to cool.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the whites and yolks of 4 eggs until very light.

  2. Add the eggs to the cooled mush and gradually mix in 1 quart of all-purpose flour.

  3. Dissolve ½ teaspoon of baking soda in ½ pint of buttermilk or sour cream, then add to the mixture.

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

Bake the waffles

  1. Preheat waffle irons for 1 hour before baking.

  2. Butter the irons thoroughly and bake the waffles quickly, filling the irons only half full of batter.

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 whites and yolks add lift and structure to the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the waffle together as it bakes.
Buttermilk or sour cream
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the waffles rise and tenderize.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk or sour cream to produce gas for rising.
Indian meal
Cornmeal base that gives the waffles their characteristic corn flavor and texture.

The step that matters

Preheat waffle irons for 1 hour before baking. A thoroughly hot iron sears the batter quickly on contact, helping the waffles set crisp outside and release cleanly. Under-heated irons cause sticking and pale, soggy results.

“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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