SYMHC Classics: Waffles

This 2020 episode explores the history of waffles, from early grain cakes all the way up to their modern proliferation on tables and as street foods around the world.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. It is National Waffle Day in the United States,
commemorating the first US patent on a waffle iron that
was issued August twenty fourth, eighteen sixty nine. There are
also other days observed as Waffle Day, including March twenty
fifth in some parts of the world. So our episode
on waffles is Today's Saturday Classic. This originally came out

(00:24):
December ninth, twenty twenty. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed
in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

(00:44):
I'm going to make a confession right up front here.
I cannot resist the call of the novelty waffle iron.
You can't. I buy them that I don't need. I
love them. And that's actually how I became interested in waffles.
I before I started buying things that would help me
make death Star waffles, I would have told you I
was a pancake person. I think just because I grew

(01:05):
up with pancakes well, and you can also make pancakes
in fun shapes with little pancake molds. That's true, although
you don't usually get the same level of detail, but
both utterly delicious and I thought, you know, twenty twenty
has been a weird year, let's throw in more fun episodes,
and waffle seemed like a good one. Waffles are, of

(01:26):
course very popular and quite commonplace on tables and as
a street food around the world, but they've evolved a
whole lot over time to become the syrup vehicle that
most of us think of the mass. So today we're
going to take a peek at the waffles origins and
the various iterations of dough or batter cooked between two
hot plates. Humankind has been figuring out how to make

(01:47):
hot cakes really for millennia. All kinds of pulpy compositions
ground grains cooked on hot rocks go all the way
back to the Neolithic Age. There is evidence the flat
hot cakes made for cereal grains flipped to ensure cooking
on both sides during this time and really various cultures
all around the globe. Yeah, the waffle history, as we'll

(02:10):
talk about it, is largely you know, European to develop
what we think of, but like everybody was figuring out
how to cook with grains and you know, sometimes a
little water and make paste that could make a little
flat cake with the iron age. Starting in twelve hundred BCE,
cooking of course shifted as new tools were developed, including
cooking plates precursors you could think of them to the

(02:33):
modern day griddle, and people started cooking their flat cakes
on those instead of rocks. And sometimes they would even
heat two iron plates and then press batter between them
for fast and even cooking. So you can see how
that's very much like a waffle, just in a rudimentary
kind of version. I also like the part of history
where we got the upgrade of going from cooking stuff

(02:55):
on rocks to cooking stuff on surface made for cooking. Yes,
and also that we were like, let's mush them together
and see what that makes. The first iteration of what
would eventually evolve into what we would recognize as a
waffle was called oblios, and these cakes were first seen

(03:17):
in ancient Greece. And these oblios are sort of proto
waffles because they were cooked in between two metal plates.
They weren't really sweet, they were kind of like a flat,
really simple cake, but the plates that were used to
make them did often have designs on them. You can
see pictures of some of these kind of lacy designs.

(03:39):
In some cases, yeah, they're very pretty. I will say this,
oblios is an interesting word because you will just as
often see it in relation to waffle history, where the
L and the e have been transposed, So it's like obelios. Uh.
I think someone made that switch somewhere along the line

(04:00):
and it has propagated in both ways ever since. So
if you're ever looking at a thing and it's different,
that's why I went with the oblio's version. Because the
next word that we're going to talk about seems like
a pretty obvious transition from that word, which is ubli,
which that word evolved into over time as these flat

(04:21):
cakes spread throughout other cultures in Europe, and ubli is
a French word, and that spread was in large part
because the Catholic Church adopted these ubli as part of
religious rituals and events. So to be clear, these were
not a replacement for communion wafers, although the name ubli
does mean wafers in French. But instead they were kind

(04:41):
of another edible item that could be included in warships.
So often it was the finish to a meal with
religious significance, or they were served at the end of
a religious service. Ubli were made by specialists called oblo yure,
who became experts at using two metal plates to cook batter,
and this batter was off made with flour, a little
bit of salt and wine instead of water. Ubili became

(05:05):
established as a street food, as these specialists would wait
outside of churches to sell their wares to members of
the congregation as they left, particularly on Saint's Days and
other important religious days. These again weren't sweet. They were
savory ubili, which were often pretty large and seasoned with herbs.
Sometimes they would be rolled into a cone shape to
make them easier to carry home. Yeah. I heard one

(05:29):
description or read one description where they were talking about
how they were big. They were like the size of
a pizza, and I was like, I suppose they're probably
in some ways a relative, right. It's a large, big
thing that has some herbs sprinkled on it, but of
course branching branching trees. Again, there's no butter or syrup
in sight here. These were still very simple in terms

(05:49):
of ingredients and they were usually made with barleyer oat flour,
but the designs started to get really ornate in medieval Europe.
Some of these designs mimicked the patterns of stained glass,
others recreated heraldry, and there were sometimes even more detailed scenes,
such as landscapes or even depictions of biblical stories. In

(06:10):
the twelve hundreds we also start to see early hints
of the waffle pattern developing. The old French word waffla
referred to a piece of honey beehive, and as these
honeycomb patterned flat cakes started to become popular, they were
called gofre. This is a French word for waffle that
was derived from the old French waffla, and at this

(06:32):
point in Europe, regardless of the design, waffles had to
be held over a fire to be baked, so there
was a degree of danger in their preparation. The usage
of the word waffle, we should note, also has roots
in other languages. There's waffle in Dutch, which just has
one f. There's weffin which means weave in Old English,

(06:53):
and there is vaba in Old High German. Yeah, you'll
see all of those words sometimes noted as the the
root word for waffle, but all of those languages are
kind of being passed around and related and as street
vending of waffles in France became more competitive. Things also
got a bit contentious. By the time King Charles, the

(07:14):
ninth son of Catherine de Medici was ruling in the
late fifteen hundreds, this problem had escalated to such a
degree that the monarch actually had to make business regulations
to try to control the situation and picturing fabulous oublier
and waffle fist fights. The main regulation that he came
up with, coincidentally was very similar to the social distancing

(07:35):
rule we've been facing in pandemic Vendors had to stay
six feet apart. The competitive nature of selling gophro was
driven by this massive level of popularity. Of course, waffles
crossed all socioeconomic lines, in part because they were so adaptable.
The wealthiest levels of society enjoyed much flakier versions that

(07:56):
were made with egg and sometimes even sweetened with honey,
and then poorer classes had access to versions made with
lesser quality flowers and water without any of the ingredients
that would really make them into a crispy or fluffy delicacy.
North America was introduced to the Dutch waffles with one
f thanks to colonists who immigrated in the early decades

(08:17):
of the sixteen hundreds for expectations management here, because I
know people are already thinking it stroop waffles were not
invented yet. Were going to come back to that, but
it does seem like at least some of these Dutch
waffles were definitely intended to be sweet rather than savory.
In the book Colonial Days in Old New York, written
by Alice Morse Earl in eighteen ninety six, there's a

(08:39):
description of what the author calls a Dutch uma from
the seventeenth century, which was a sifter used to sprinkle
cinnamon and sugar on freshly made waffles. In seventeen twenty five,
Robert Smith published the book Buckle Up for this name
Court Cookery, The Complete English cook containing the choicest and

(09:03):
newest receipts for making soups, pottages, frickaseas, harshes, farces, ragus, cullises, sauces,
forced meats and souses, with various ways of dressing most
sorts of flesh, fish and fowl, wild and tame, with
the best methods of potting, collaring and pickling. As likewise

(09:24):
of pastes, pies, pasties, patties, puddings, tansies, biscuits, creams, cheesecakes, florindines, cakes, jellies,
syllabubs and custards. Also of candy making and preserving, with
a bill of fare for every month in the year,
and the latest improvements in cookery, pastry, et cetera. Whush,

(09:47):
there's a lot of words. This heavily titled tome, published
in London, offers the first instance of the word waffle
included in English language print, and the recipe that Smith
included for waffles is as follows. Quote take flour, cream sack, nutmeg, sugar, eggs,
yeast of what quantity you will mix these to a

(10:08):
batter and let them stand to rise. Then add a
little melted butter and bake one to try. If they burn,
add more butter. Melt butter with sac refined sugar and
orange flour water for the sauce. Uh sack in this
instance refers to cooking sherry. If you had not heard
that term before, I like that. The solution to the

(10:29):
I give you no measurements recipe if it doesn't work
is just keep adding butter, keep putting more butter in there. Yeah.
So this base recipe has sugar and while Smith's book
also offers a really yummy sounding syrup recipe. Waffles were
also seen as a companion starts to savory entrees, so

(10:49):
you might make a waffle and then ladle a stew
on top of it, for example, Yummy, I love a
savory waffle. I'd eat that. Yeah. Nine years later, in
seventeen thirty four, a recipe for a Dutch waffle, in
this case called a Dutch wafer, appeared in a cookbook
by Mary Kettleby. This book is titled a Collection of

(11:10):
above three hundred Receipts in Cookery, physic and Surgery for
the use of all good wives, tender mothers, and careful nurses.
And this recipe for what Kettleby called the right Dutch
Wafer shows the difference in the Dutch style waffle of
the time as being sweeter. It says, take four eggs
and beat them very well, and then take a good

(11:30):
spoonful of fine sugar, one nutmeg grated, a pint of cream,
and a pound of flour, a pound of butter melted,
two or three spoonfuls of rose water, and two good
spoonfuls of yeast. Mix all well together and bake them
in your wafer tongs on the fire. For the sauce,
take grated cinnamon sack and melted butter, sweetened to your

(11:53):
taste delicious. We are going to talk more about waffle
irons in a moment, which was mentioned in that recipe,
but for we are going to pause for a little
sponsor break. We mentioned right before the break in that

(12:13):
recipe that Tracy read, uh, wafer tongs and waffle irons
by this point did indeed look sort of like large
tongs with a hinge near the two cooking plates, and
then long handles sometimes you know, a couple feet long.
These irons would have been used in an open hearts
so those long handles enabled the cook to fill the
base plate with batter, shut the iron, and then push

(12:33):
it into the open flame for cooking without risking their
person getting too close or up into the flame. And
as kitchens transitioned to wood stoves, those handles became shorter
and the waffle iron started to be placed on top
of the stove to cook instead of directly into a fire.
The first waffle iron in the US is often cited
as arriving in seventeen eighty nine thanks to Thomas Jefferson.

(12:57):
He had been Minister to France from seventeen eighty five
up until he left in seventeen eighty nine, that being
hastened by the start of the French Revolution, and he
brought back two pieces of cooking tech from Europe. There
was a pasta maker and a hinged, long handled waffle iron. However,
this was not the first waffle iron to cross the Atlantic. No,

(13:18):
he gets credit, and he may have caused a surge
in popularity, but there were already waffle irons here. We
know this because well before Jefferson is said to have
brought his waffle iron to the States, and in fact
before the colonies gained independence from England, waffle frolics were
popular among the colonists. In seventeen forty four, what sounds

(13:40):
like an especially frolic laden and perhaps risky waffle frolic
in New York was described in a letter by twenty
one year old William Livingston, written to a Miss E
t and dated November seventeenth of that year. Here's what
it says. Quote, we had the waffle frolic at Miss
Walton's talked of before your departure. The feast as usual

(14:01):
was preceded by cards, and the company so numerous that
they filled two tables. After a few games, a magnificent
supper appeared in grand order in decorum. But for my part,
I was not a little grieved that so luxurious a
feast should come under the name of a waffle frolic,
because if this be the case, I must expect but
a few waffle frolics for the future. The frolic was

(14:24):
closed up with ten sunburnt virgins lately come from Columbus's Newfoundland.
Besides a play of my own invention, which I have
not room enough to describe at present, However, kissing constitutes
a great part of its entertainment. Livingston, in case you
don't recognize that name, went on to become the Governor
of New Jersey and was one of the signers of

(14:45):
the US Constitution. That mention of virgins from Columbus's Newfoundland
maybe referring to indigenous women. That, of course, adds a
potentially rather unpleasant layer to this story. In sweeter developments, though,
in the city of Gudha, the Netherlands, the first Stroup
waffles are made in the early eighteen hundreds, and if
you have had these you know, they are made to

(15:07):
resemble breakfast waffles, but they're really kind of a cross
between a waffle and a cookie. They're made of a
dough that is pressed in an iron, and the story
goes that they were created when a baker combined syrup
and breadcrumbs together and then pressed them. These little waffle
cousins are normally either cooked or sliced to be very
very thin, and then layered like a sandwich with a

(15:28):
caramel syrup filling, and they are delicious. On August twenty fourth,
eighteen sixty nine, the first waffle iron patent in the
United States was issued, which is US Patent number ninety
four thousand and forty three. It was granted to a
man named Cornelius Swarthout. You'll see his name spelled a
few different names. We're going with that one because I

(15:50):
think it's the easiest to pronounce. And this was given
for what he called an improvement on waffle irons that
he developed in his home in Troy, New York. So
this iron had a very heavy base with the bottom
waffle textured plate mounted on it, and then another plate
that sat on top affixed with a hinge. So the
waffle iron could open, have the batter poured in, and

(16:10):
then could flip so each side like within the thing,
It could flip so that each side would get time
close to the hot surface of the stove, and then
a finished, evenly cooked waffle could be removed. The main
improvement that was made here was the inclusion of a
handle and a clasp to make flipping the plates a
lot safer and easier. You couldn't mismatch the plate line up,

(16:32):
there was less of a risk of burns. Swarthout described
it like this quote. The nature of my invention consists
in providing a handle connected with and forming part of
a waffle iron, by means of which the same may
be readily turned over without danger of slipping, and without
the possibility of burning the hand. It also consists in

(16:52):
providing a device by means of which the upper or
covering portion of a waffle iron may be raised so
as to expose it was the interior for filling or
for removing the waffle wind done without the danger of
the cover slipping back, and without burning the hand. That
description probably sounds a lot like a waffle iron you

(17:13):
have used, or you might use today, And it really
does look pretty familiar. But of course, homes did not
have electricity in eighteen sixty nine, and this waffle iron
still had to be placed on a heat source. So,
as we said, it was intended to sit on a stovetop.
And over the next several decades, this basic type of
waffle iron worked so well and was so popular that

(17:33):
it was widely produced for home use. Waffle frolics or
waffle parties had continued to be popular right through the
nineteenth century and then into the twentieth. In a nineteen
oh seven book titled Suppers Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions,
author Paul Pierce lays out a detailed plan for hosting
a perfect waffle party. And while this is built as

(17:53):
a perfect way to host a party for an apartment
dweller without a big kitchen, it's really no simple affair
at all. No, there's so many steps, and Pierce's perfect
waffle party instructions star wars some pretty involved invitations. Quote
of cream white satin fashioned in the exact shape and
size of a waffle section, padded with white cotton wadding

(18:14):
and tacked to simulate the meeting place of the irons.
They are then scorched the right color with a hot
iron and on them is printed in sepia tints. Come
and eat me. The date and address details are printed
on the reverse. I don't know why that struck me
as fun. It's a very involved invitation and also again

(18:37):
a little riskye by the way, this perfect party plan
also includes the printing of a quote much praised recipe
for waffles to be placed at each guest's spot, and
then the hosts assigns a utensil to each guest and
they complete the recipe assembly line style as a team.
Then the guests are seated with teams of two pouring

(18:59):
the bat and monitoring the cooking on a rotating basis
while other courses, including veal, are served. The doors to
the kitchen are to be propped open throughout all this
so that the teams minding the waffle cooking in the
kitchen do not feel left out. It's a cute little
instruction for how to make a fun party with waffles.

(19:20):
I would do it. I'm not making those complex invites though,
I'm not quilting a bunch of satin into waffles. But
the first electrical waffle iron was produced in the early
nineteen hundreds, and it is believed that the Simplex Electrical
Company was the first to make one. This Boston, Massachusetts
manufacturer created an iron that made circular waffles, but the

(19:40):
unit itself was rectangular. It had a front row of
plates that folded onto the back row to create the
closed cooking surface. This in write up sounds like it
was not really a safe product. The regulations around electrical
appliances that are in place today, for example, did not
yet exist, so like during the flipping, there were like
electrical contacts that would be exposed. But we should say

(20:04):
that Simplex did go on to make other safer models though,
and General Electric usually gets the credit for making the
first electrical waffle iron, which the company did in nineteen eleven,
designed by Thomas J. Stackbeck, but this was really a prototype.
The company did not start production of waffle irons to
sell for home use until the late nineteen teens. Waffle

(20:27):
popularity continued to grow in the US in the early
half of the twentieth century, so much so that manufacturers
started making waffle irons that were meant to be visually
pleasing as well as functional, so they could be used
right at the table and they would fit into the
rest of the china and tablewear and be just as
pretty as anything else. Some of these had decorated porcelain
exteriors and they were sold with breakfast sets that included

(20:49):
coffee service as well as various specialized bowls to include batter.
You could pour that right into the iron by the
person who was being served, so you would get a fresh,
hot waffle. There were all kinds of interesting waffle developments
from the nineteen thirties on. We will talk about them
after we hear from the sponsors who keep our show going.

(21:18):
In nineteen thirty eight, Well Supper Club opened in Harlem,
New York, and it catered to the musician crowd, staying
open late into the night. The story goes that because
a lot of their clientele was getting there too late
for dinner and too early for breakfast, the two meals
found a crossover in fried chicken and waffles, which has
since become popular around the country. I will also say this,

(21:39):
you will see it kind of casually referenced as something
that developed as a cast off food from waffle parties
were combined by people who were either enslaved or were
working as service staff in homes, but that's not really
well documented. This we know definitely happened. Also, chicken and
waffles to live. In nineteen fifty three, the first frozen

(22:03):
waffles called fraffles were introduced by three brothers. They were Tony,
Sam and Frank Dorsa. These frozen waffles were the third
invention of the Dorsa brothers, and they had also created
a mayonnaise and a dry waffle mix, and they were
doing that under the name Ego. Because of the egg
content in the mayonnaise, most people started calling the froffles

(22:26):
by the name Eggos, which the Dorses just adopted as
the new product name. The Eggo Company was bought by
Kellogg's in the early nineteen seventies and now produces a
vast array of waffles and other frozen breakfast products that's
still going. The Belgian waffle might surprise you in how
late it joins this story. In nineteen sixty four, at

(22:49):
the World's Faring Queens, New York, Maurice Vermersh and his
family set up a waffle booth in the Belgian Village Pavilion.
Their booth signage read Brussels Waffles, a bell gem product
that's b e l dash Gem. Vermersh's waffles were light
and fluffy, crisp on the outside, and then they would
melt in your mouth. Visitors to the expo could buy

(23:10):
them plane or with a little bit of whipped cream
and fresh strawberry slices. This was actually not their real introduction.
Vermersh had sold them at a smaller booth at the
Seattle World's Fair two years earlier to kind of test
the waters. But this treat took off in New York
and so that's usually noted as the birth of the
Belgian waffles popularity. To most of the customers, this pastry

(23:31):
was just a revelation. The waffles that were normally served
in the US were a lot heavier. They tended to
be topped with a bunch of syrup and butter. Charging
a dollar per waffle. The Vermershas needed to keep two
dozen waffle irons going and have ten people come help
them slice strawberries just to keep up with the orders. Yeah,

(23:52):
it's one of those things that gets listed, is like
one of the most popular things at the World's Fair
that year. Maurice Vermersh did notice, however, that a lot
of people didn't understand why they were called Brussels waffles.
They didn't really get that his version of waffles was
a family recipe developed from a regional style in Belgium.
So he just started calling them Belgian waffles and that

(24:13):
was easy to understand and caught on with customers. Over time,
the Belgian waffle, which he did not keep control of
as a name, evolved to be more like the waffles
that US customers had already been eating, and it got
farther and farther away from this handheld street food that
Vermersh had sold. Today, a Belgian waffle has deep, deep

(24:34):
pockets in its waffle texture to hold a lot of
butter and toppings. And it's a huge departure from the
idea that they're supposed to be so delicious and simple
on their own that they need few, if any accouterment.
You would be hard pressed to carry most restaurant dishes
that are described as Belgian waffles around with you as

(24:55):
you walk. Yeah, keep in mind they're actually supposed to
be a handheld food. There is we should mention another
popular type of waffle that hails from Belgium. It is
a very different texture in flavor. This is the Liga.
It's named after Liga Belgium. Aliga is denser and chewier,
and this version of a waffle, according to legend, has

(25:17):
been around since the Middle Ages, though it's only been
documented since the early nineteenth century. They are made with
pearl sugar, which comes in these dense clumps, and they
don't dissolve into the batter. Instead, pieces of pearl sugar
caramelize into sweet bits throughout the waffle. Waffles have also
inspired innovation in non gastronomic areas. When Bill Bauerman, who

(25:40):
was a track coach at the University of Oregon, applied
for a patent for a shoe where the quote sole
has short, multi sided, polygon shaped studs which provide gripping
edges that give greatly improved traction. It used a waffle
iron to cast the textured soul. This gave birth to
the Nike Company, and that shoe is part of the

(26:02):
collection at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Can
also find it online if you just search Nike waffle trainer. Yeah.
In the US, August twenty fourth is National Waffle Day.
That is the day that Cornelias swore that out was
granted his patent. International Waffle Day is March twenty fifth,
and if that's not enough waffle holiday action, you can

(26:24):
also celebrate National Waffle Iron Day on June twenty ninth.
And of course, there's a whole world of pastries that
share culinary DNA with waffles that we have not even
touched on here, like the Italian pitzele or the Middle
Eastern jidebi, and both of those are deep fried. There's
also Irish style waffles which have a really crispy texture,

(26:47):
and Korean style which are really heavy on the dessert
type toppings. Also a range of savory waffles to really
match any palette or preference. Also some things that have
nothing to do with waffles that people describe my best
sort of insert nationality here waffle like okonoma yaki, which
is just not a thing that's like waffle in any way,

(27:10):
but sometimes people call them Japanese waffles. Right yeah, uh yeah.
Waffles are international and have been adapted in a million
different ways. They're also like super fun different ways that
restaurants and chefs like to make their own twists on waffles. Yeah,
I want to host a waffle frolic. I did have

(27:31):
a funny thing where I was doing Google searches for
waffle Frolic and there's apparently a restaurant in Ithaca named
waffle Frolic YEP, which I would love to go to
just for the name. Uh yeah, when you mentioned waffle
Frolic to me while you were working on this, I
kind of went down a whole waffle Frolic rabbit hole
because I was like, you know, slang changes over time, yeah,

(27:54):
and if like if I read a whole book series
that was set in the nineteen twenties and there was
slang in it that I had never heard before at all,
and I was like, does this mean something different than
we listen? After all of those riskue hints, I started
to wonder if waffle Frolic wasn't code. But it sounds

(28:15):
like just a delicious party. Thanks so much for joining
us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of
the archive, if you heard an email address or a
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(28:36):
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(28:57):
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