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All text and pictures of dishes are the intellectual property of
Coquinaria and may not be reproduced without permission and acknowledgement..
recipe july/august 2005
Eyerwafele met sneeu
Medieval wafers with "snow" (whipped cream)
Dutch
version of this recipe
Wafers are delicious and easy to make. Actually
they are a kind of "pressed pancakes". According to The Oxford
Companion to Food wafers are thin and crisp, waffles are
thicker and made with yeast.
The recipe on this page is for thin wafers.
Wafres aren't baked in an oven, but in a waffle
iron. This kitchen aid was "invented" in the thirteenth century. Those
early wafers weren't always of the sweet variety, there are also many recipes for
cheese wafers.
The waffle iron consists of two hinged iron plates attached to two long wooden
handles to protect the baker from burning his hands. The plates already had the
typical "wafer pattern", but there were also plates elaborately stamped with family crests, religious symbols, figures, or
landscape scenes. Mostly the plates were rectangular, but there were also plates
to bake round wafers or waffles.
On one of the preheated and greased plates some batter was poured, then the
plates would be closed. After a couple of minutes your wafer is ready. Prior to
the invention of the waffle iron the batter for wafers was used to bake flat
pancakes. Nowadays you can buy electric waffle irons. I have one too, it makes
excellent waffles and wafers.
A famous Dutch wafer is the syrup
waffle (in Dutch "stroopwafel") from Gouda: two thin, round
wafers with sugar syrup in between. It is said that the syrup waffle was
"invented" in 1784 by a baker in Gouda who wanted to use leftover
produce: he crumbled cookies, made that into a dough and baked waffles of it. In
the beginning of the twentieth century the manufacturing of syrup waffles grew
out to a complete industry. Me, I love syrup waffles!
Another much eaten wafer, which many don't even
recognise as such, is the ice cone. That is a thin wafer which has been rolled
in a cone-shape immediately after baking. This brilliant way of consuming ice
cream originates from the United States. Two bakers had the same idea,
independently from each other, in resp. 1896 en 1904. (You can read more about
that on this site).
Anyway, the historical recipe on this page is a
combination of two recipes from the Middle Dutch convolute KANTL Gent 15, dating
from around 1500. Elsewhere on this site you can find an edition
of this medieval convolute.
And simply because I like it I have added a recipe for whipped cream. Nowadays
it seems whipped cream comes out of spray cans (often it isn't even real whipped
cream). I have seen small children spraying the whipped cream straight from the
can into their greedy little mouths.
In 1500 whipped cream was something you had to work for: the whisk was a stick
with a split end. The resulting white foam was poetically called
"snow".
Om ghode waffellen te backen.
Nempt gheraspt wijt broet. Nemt
daer toe enen doijer van enen ey ende enen lepel pot sucars of melsucars, ende hier toe nempt half waters ende
half wijns ende ghenbar ende canel (KANTL Gent 15 vol.1, p.36, recipe 83) |
To bake good wafers.
Take grated white bread. Take with that the yolk of an egg and a spoonful of pot sugar or powdered sugar. Take with that half water and half wine, and ginger and cinnamon.
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Om eyer wafelen.
Neemt ende raspt witte broot, daer eyer in alsoe vele dat is al morw
deech, ende tot eender dosijnen eyer omtrent een gelas wyns, ende een lutken
zuycker om den wyn wel zoet te maeken, ende wat gesmelter booteren daer in. Men
maeckse oeck wel alsoe van terwenbloemen. Vanden broot eest best. (KANTL
Gent 15 vol. 2, p.56, recipe 82) |
[To make] egg wafers.
Grate white bread, [add] as many eggs that the dough is liquid (litt.
"soft"). Take for a dosen eggs about one glass of wine and a little
sugar to sweeten the wine well, and some molten butter in it. They are also made
with wheat flour. [Made] with [grated] bread is the best.
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2.197
Om sneeu te maken.
Neempt saenen van roemen, ende wat roos waeters, ende wat suijkers. Ende neempt
een pen, ende spleijt se ten ende op, ende wrijft die tussen v hand(en). Ende dan
neempt daer dat schuijm af, ende legghet op een ghetraeijlden tergoer, ende dan
doeghet in een schael. (KANTL Gent 15 vol. 2, p.80, recipe 197)
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To make "snow" .
Take cream and some rose water and sugar. And take a stick, split it up at the
end, and rub it between your hands. Then take off the foam, and lay it on a
ribbed plate, then put in on a platter.
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Wafers
with whipped cream, The modern version.
For 24
thin wafers:
200 gram (1 2/3 cup) flour or (2 1/2 cups) finely grated white bread (without crust)
100 to 200 gram (3 1/2 to 7 fl.oz) butter
2 eggs
100 gram (1/2 cup) sugar (because I like it, but 30 gram (2 Tbsp.) also suffices)
1,5 decilitre (2/3 cup) white wine
1 tsp. each of ginger and cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. rose water (not in these recipes, but in the recipe "Om
oblien te backen" (to bake wafers) in De Verstandige Kock rosewater
is used)
Preparation in advance:
Melt the butter without browning it. Temper eggs, wine and rose water, add the
molten butter. If you want to make the wafers into rolls you'll need 200 gram
butter, if you leave them flat 100 gram is sufficient.
Mix flour, sugar, powdered ginger, cinnamon and salt. Pour in the liquids whilst
stirring, and keep stirring until you have obtained a smooth batter.
Preparation:
Heat a waffle iron with plates for thin wafers. If you have an authentic waffle
iron you'll have to heat it on a coal fire or maybe a barbecue. If you have an
electric one, just plug it in and switch to "on". Grease the inside of
the irons with a little butter.
Spoon some of the batter on one of the irons and squeeze the irons shut. Bake
the wafers to a nice golden brown colour (my electric waffle iron takes about
four minutes).
Open the iron, remove the waffles, cut them and roll them if you want to. Do
this straight away, when the wafers are still pliable. When the wafers have
cooled they are more or less hard and crispy.
To serve:
With "snow" (see below).
Wafers are at their best when eaten whilst they are stil fresh. You could reheat
them in an oven at moderate temperature. Do not use the microwave oven, the
wafers will become soft.
Snow or
Whipped Cream:
1/8 litre (1/2 cup) whipping cream
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. rose water
Whip the cream to a fluffy comsistence. Use a
whisk or an electric mixer (when using an electric mixer, do not whisk at full
speed or you'll end up with butter instead of whipped cream). You may even use a
small stick with split ends if you want to!
Once the cream is whipped, add sugar and rose water.
Bibliography
W.L. Braekman, "Een belangrijke middelnederlandse bron voor Vorselmans’ Nyeuwen Coock Boeck (1560)". In: Volkskunde 87 (1986) pp. 1-24 (transl. of title: An important Middle Dutch source for Vorselmans 'New Cook Book' (1560)) (ms KANTL Gent 15
vol. 1).
W.L. Braekman, Een
nieuw zuidnederlands kookboek uit de vijftiende eeuw
(A new southern Dutch cookbook from the fifteenth century).
Scripta 17, Brussel, 1986. (ms KANTL Gent 15 vols. 2 and 3).
This
manuscript is in the course of being published by me on this site. The first
volume is now completed, the second
(of four) is in progress. The Middle Dutch text is accompanied by translations
in modern Dutch and English.
De verstandige kock, of sorghvuldige huys houdster (anonymus) from 1668. Facsimile-edition with an introduction by Joop Witteveen. De KAN, Amsterdam, 1993.
For those of you who can understand Dutch: On
the website of Henk Werk
you can find information on wafers,
but also on "poffertjes" (very tiny pancakes), "oliebollen"
(sort of doughnut balls) and beignets. He has also given me some advise, for
which I thank him.
Here you
can find a history of wafers from ancient Egypt to medieval times.
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A
little aside concerning Fortune Cookies.
I have baked these wafers for the opening of an exhibition on the Sidrac-exhibition
in the Utrecht University
Museum. The Sidrac is a medieval question-answer text that
covered scientific disciplines as they were in the Middle Ages. The original
idea was to hide questions from this text in little balls which were to be
put in a lucky bag. But in the end it was decided to roll the questions in the
baked wafers, just like chinese fortune cookies. However, as far as I know it
was not a medieval european custom to hide texts in food. Moreover, Fortune
Cookies are not an ancient chinese custom, not even chinese! The first fortune
cookies were baked in California in the beginning of the twentieth century.
Later tourists in Asia asked for the cookies as dessert. That's how the fortune
cookies came to China. (more
information on the history of Fortune Cookies)
This page was last updated on
23-07-09
(d-m-y).
All text and
pictures of dishes are the intellectual property of Coquinaria and may not be
reproduced without permission and acknowledgement.
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