How were waffles invented?

Was there simply a Belgian who invented the waffle iron?
Or were they originally made some other way?

I’m trying to imagine the intermediate steps (the missing links of evolution).
Perhaps they started just as a pancakes in a ridged skillet or on a ridged grill made for some other purpose.

Or perhaps the ridges are an afterthought and the main invention was the two-sided grill, the one we use for grilled cheese sandwiches.
And maybe it had a textured side originally patterened to release grease, like a George Foreman grill.

Here you go:

http://www.waffleweek.com/history/history.htm

They’ve been patterned since the 1200’s according to that, and “Belgian waffle” is a recent term. Note that questions involving the invention of basic food items usually depend heavily on exactly WHAT one is willing to consider an example of the item in question.

In answering them, one has to waffle a lot.

They probably started as pancakes - there’s still a hugenout/dutch-style pancake (“oblietjies”) made here with a cast-iron device that just has a design, rather than ridges (fleur-de-lis on my aunt’s). But these are more wafers than waffles.
Waffles as we understand them go back at least Chaucer’s time (He mentions “waffres, piping hot from the glede”, and I’ve made cheese waffles with a contemporaneous recipe in a modern waffle-iron)
Certainly they were around by the 16th Century So I doubt we can track one person as being the inventor (although that is a flemish painting, so “A Belgian” is possible.

damn, yabob , you beat me to the punch.

but I got pictures!

From the above mentioned site:

Whoa, you nutty 18th century Brits really knew how to party!

A waffle party ain’t no more absurd than a fondue party

Newspaper headline circa 1982: “British waffle on Falklands.”

Probably some politician. :smiley:

I think Phil Knight made the first one by casting it against the sole of a running shoe.

I ‘m amazed they go back that far, but pictures don’t lie (at least when they are Old Masters’)

As to waffle parties, that would be a trick. You can only make one or two at a time, unless you have a lot of irons, so I don’t think it will overtake the pancake breakfast anytime soon as a scout troop fund raiser.

But I have a problem with this quote
“…– recognizing the world’s greatest concoction of flour, eggs and cream.”

That honor goes to the cream puff. Just ask the Cream Puff Growers Advisory Board :wink:

And speaking of things you thought were traditional, but were somebody’s invention, did you know that Bundt® is a registered trademark of Northland Aluminum Products, Inc., Minneapolis, MN. Whoda thunkit?

Is it just me or does it look like the man standing behind the woman wielding the waffle iron is reaching around to grab her breast? I mean, that would certainly explain the attraction of a waffle party.

Nah, you’re confusing waffles with the Internet.

Understandable; there are some similarities! :smiley:

I read it this way: BRITISH LEFT WAFFLES ON FALKLANDS

You may be right.

It does look like that Purl. Perhaps he was contemplating a method for making an ice cream cone?

So that’s where those pointy bras came from! I hope he cooled the waffles first!

Hmmm! On the other hand, the ice cream might be fun… Mmmm!)

Heh, funny you should ask! I have in my hand an article from a Flemish history journal called “Enkele Vlaamse waffelrecepten uit de late 18de eeuw comparatief getoetst” (Some flemish waffle recipes from the 18th c, compared. (It was facing an article I needed and I couldn’t resist making a copy)). I can’t believe I’m getting to USE this.

This mentions, among others, recipes from 1560, Antwerp (a printed cookbook edited by one Gheeraert Vorselman):

To make good waffles
Take some shredded white bread add to that a yolk of an egg and a spoon of pot-sugar or meal-sugar, and add to this a half water and half wine.

To make a waffle on a trellissed iron [here’s our waffle iron]
Take shredded white bread, add a yolk, some sugar and the fat of some sweet cream.

Here are some later early 18th c ones as well:

I. 16 eggs in a big pot; a bit of salt to break these up; stir in a pint? pound? of flour [not our modern pint or pound in any case-- word is ‘pont’]; let a pot of milk warm up and toss this in, add a bit of yeast, and around a ‘pont’ of butter. If it’s too thin add more butter. One can bake it up from this mixed pot 3 days later."

II. 6 pints of milk, 7 ‘vollaerts’ [a kind of pre-made cake-chunk which would add to bulk], 30 eggs and a handful of flour, 1 1/2 pont butter. [Ok, so a ‘pont’ must be ‘pound’ since pint appears as pint]

III. Good waffle-bake.
13 ‘oortiens’ milk [1 oort was a fourth of a stuiver, a coin-- this was an amount one could buy at market], 25 eggs, 6 volaerts, 3 pounds of flour, 3 oortiens of gold yeast.

IV. Missus Gormhagstig’s waffles [love that title].
An oortien of yeast, 4 pounds flour, 10 vollaerden, 10 eggs for a pound of flour [sic-- each?], 2 pounds butter, 7 pints milk. Good waffles and will go a long way. [Editor adds that this seems to come from a pharmacy family from Ghent]

The huge amounts here are because waffles were (and still are) a kind of festival food so I suppose they had to feed masses.

Wasn’t that fun?