The Definitive Waffle
By Kate Harrigan
The pancake is a fine food. Inexpensive, warm and filling, pancakes are the stuff of sweet childhood mornings and indulgent adult meals. Heaped with melting butter and finished with maple syrup, pancakes are unarguably luscious.
But the pancake falls short of perfection. Too quickly does the butter slide off that steaming pile to waste itself on the ham sitting alongside. There, it is joined almost immediately by the syrup, also running unimpeded onto the plate.It’s unclear how long man had to chase his butter and syrup around the plate with a forkful of pancake before the waffle iron arrived to transform those flat, round pancakes into clever and resource waffles, so perfectly equipped to hold melting butter and maple syrup in place. It is known that blacksmiths in southern Italy began making waffle irons sometime in the 1800s. These stovetop devices were too expensive for the average home cook, and were either communally owned or were in the possession of the village baker.In 1869, Cornelius Swarthhout, of Troy, N.Y., received the first American patent for a waffle iron. And although it was quite primitive compared to the gleaming, electric non-stick models that adorn the countertops of modern American kitchens, Swarthout’s waffle iron quickly gained in popularity. Swarthout’s model was designed to sit on top of a coal stove. The cook would pour batter on the griddle and closes the cover. When one side was well cooked, the waffle maker was flipped over and the other side of the waffle cooked to a golden brown.Villaware Classic Italian Kitchenware produces patterned appliances to make traditional waffles, as well as their plump Belgian cousins and the skinny crispy Italian relation, the pizelle. Luigi Vitanonio, grandfather of the company’s current president and an accomplished woodworker, first created intricate patterns in wood and then used these as templates for the patterned pizelle makers he sold to Italian immigrants. He eventually made 10 patterns, some of which still can be seen in the pizelle and waffle makers sold by the company,In the depth of another winter, we should thank waffle makers for making possible these crisp and chewy treats, with their pools of warm syrup and melted butter. Because a waffle without a waffle maker is, after all, just a pancake.
