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?