45 Fun Facts About Waffle

The English word 'waffle' comes directly from which language?

Dutch 'wafel' gave English the word; behind it sits the Frankish word for honeycomb, which is exactly what the iron leaves behind.

Krumkake, Norway's thin patterned Christmas cookie, is rolled into what shape while warm?

A cone: the name means 'curved cake', and each one is wrapped around a cone-shaped form straight off the iron, because it is only soft enough to shape while hot; many are then filled with whipped cream.

In British English, what does it mean to 'waffle on'?

Talk a lot, saying little: this 'waffle' is no relation of the food. It probably grew from 'waff', an old northern English dialect word for a dog's yelp.

What did the ancient Greeks cook between hot metal plates?

Flat cakes were baked between two hot metal plates in ancient Greece; medieval wafer-makers kept the method, and once their plates were cut with a honeycomb pattern the wafer became the waffle.

What do French speakers call a waffle?

Une gaufre was already Paris street food in the 13th century; on feast days the sellers set up their irons at church doors and sold them piping hot.

Which future US president brought four waffle irons home from France in 1789?

Thomas Jefferson shipped the four irons home after his years as minister to France, but he did not introduce the dish: colonists had been holding waffle parties in America since the 1740s.

What 11th-century movement brought flavourings like orange blossom water into the medieval wafers that became waffles?

The Crusades carried new ingredients into Western Europe; before that, sweetness came from local honey, if it came at all.

The first known waffle recipe, from the late 14th century, was written by whom?

A husband instructing his young wife wrote it: Le Ménagier de Paris (c. 1393) gives the earliest known waffle recipe and ends by advising an oiled cloth on the iron if the dough sticks.

Which 16th-century painter showed a woman baking waffles in The Fight Between Carnival and Lent?

Bruegel set her on the Carnival side of his 1559 picture, the side of feasting; across the square the Lenten crowd gets a fish stall instead.

Brussels waffles are easiest to tell from Liege waffles by what?

Their rectangular sides give Brussels waffles away: a thin batter fills the iron edge to edge, while a Liège waffle is a lump of brioche dough that comes out with no corners at all.

Belgian waffles first won over Americans topped with whipped cream and which fruit?

Strawberries: each hot waffle was piped with whipped cream, heaped with berries and sold for about a dollar, and most buyers ate it by hand off a paper napkin.

Where did Americans get the term 'Belgian waffle'?

A brand called Bel-Gem: Maurice Vermersch first sold his 'Brussels waffles' in America under their own name, found that few customers could place Brussels, and renamed them within days.

At which event did thick Belgian waffles become a craze across America?

The 1964 New York World's Fair sold the thick waffles for two summers, and imitators were opening waffle stands in other cities before it had even closed.

What leavens a standard American waffle?

Baking powder does the lifting, so the batter can be cooked as soon as it is mixed; a yeast-raised batter, like the classic Brussels one, has to stand and rise first.

Which thin Italian cookie from Abruzzo is pressed in a patterned waffle-style iron and often flavoured with anise?

Pizzelle were once pressed one at a time in an iron held over the fire by hand; in Abruzzo the iron could go into a bride's dowry, sometimes engraved with initials.

Why did Waffle House's founders name their new restaurant after the waffle in 1955?

It was their most profitable dish: one founder proposed naming the place after the best earner on its 16-item menu, and the other liked that waffles, too flimsy to carry out, marked it as a sit-down restaurant.

What did the 1869 US waffle-iron patent add to the design?

A handle and swivelling hinge let the cook flip the cast-iron plates on the stove top without slips or burns; Cornelius Swartwout of Troy, New York, was granted the patent on 24 August 1869.

Which company built a prototype plug-in waffle iron in 1911 and put one on sale in 1918?

General Electric's electric iron took waffle-making off the stove and onto the kitchen counter; by the 1930s boxed mixes had joined it and waffles were a standard home breakfast.

Norwegians often top their waffles with brunost, which is what?

A brown cheese: brunost is made by boiling whey with milk or cream until the milk sugars caramelise, which gives it a sweet, toffee-like taste that suits a warm waffle.

Which cereal company acquired the frozen-waffle brand Eggo?

Kellogg's took over the brand that Frank Dorsa had built; in 1953 he devised a carousel machine that cooked waffles and then froze them, ready to be packed and sold.

Where does the Eggo brand name come from?

An earlier mayonnaise: the Dorsa brothers first sold Eggo mayonnaise in the 1930s, named for its fresh eggs; the name later covered waffle mix and potato chips before the frozen waffle took over.

A waffle seller is said to have rolled his pastry to hold ice cream at the 1904 World's Fair in which city?

St. Louis: in the best-known account, Syrian-born Ernest Hamwi rolled up one of his crisp waffle-like pastries when the ice cream stand next door ran out of dishes; other vendors at the fair claimed the idea too.

Wells Supper Club fed jazz musicians late-night chicken and waffles in which New York neighbourhood?

Harlem: Wells opened in 1938 and fed musicians who finished their gigs too late for dinner and too early for breakfast, so a plate of fried chicken beside a waffle covered both.

What hours has Waffle House kept since its first restaurant began trading in 1955?

Around the clock, every day: one founder argued that in an age of interstates and television people would want a restaurant that never closed, not even on Christmas.

Whose waffle iron did the Nike co-founder ruin by pouring rubber into it?

His wife's: Bill Bowerman poured rubber into Barbara Bowerman's waffle iron around 1971, looking for a sole that would grip without spikes, and the pattern became Nike's Waffle Trainer.

Where did the first Waffle House open, in 1955?

Avondale Estates, Georgia, just outside Atlanta, got the first Waffle House on Labor Day 1955; the original building was later turned into the Waffle House Museum.

Who founded the Waffle House chain?

Joe Rogers Sr. and Tom Forkner were neighbours: Rogers, a manager for a diner chain, had bought his house from Forkner, an estate agent, and the pair died within two months of each other in 2017.

At Waffle House, hash browns ordered 'smothered' come with what added?

Onions: in Waffle House's hash-brown code 'smothered' adds onions and 'covered' adds cheese, and the full call, 'scattered, smothered and covered', gave Hootie and the Blowfish an album title in 2000.

The stroopwafel was first made in which city in the Netherlands?

Gouda is the stroopwafel's home town: by local tradition a baker there first pressed leftover crumbs and scraps together with syrup, a thrifty trick that bakers in other cities were copying after 1870.

Hong Kong's egg waffle, gai daan jai, is baked as a sheet of small what?

Balls: the batter is cooked between two plates of half-round cells, and the pan is flipped as soon as it is filled, so each bubble sets crisp outside and fluffy inside.

How is a stroopwafel split into its two thin wafers?

The hot disc is sliced apart while warm: each stroopwafel is baked as one thin waffle, trimmed round with a cutter, split horizontally while still soft, and glued back together with syrup.

In Belgium, street vendors usually finish a warm Brussels waffle with a dusting of what?

Icing sugar is often all a Brussels waffle gets at a Belgian street stall, eaten warm from the hand; the whipped cream, fruit and chocolate are piled on mainly where the tourists are.

Compared with a standard American waffle iron, a Belgian waffle iron has what?

Deeper grids: a Belgian iron's bigger, deeper pattern bakes a taller, lighter waffle whose pockets hold little pools of syrup, cream or fruit.

Which 1806 event sent sugar prices soaring across Europe, making sweet waffles a costlier treat?

A British naval blockade in 1806 cut continental Europe off from Caribbean cane sugar, sending prices soaring; the beet sugar industry that grew in response drove prices to historic lows within decades.

What household item is commonly made in a 'waffle weave' fabric?

Towels: waffle weave, also called honeycomb weave, forms a grid of raised squares that soaks up water and dries fast, which is why it is used for kitchen and bath towels.

In Stranger Things, Eggo waffles are the favourite food of which character?

Eleven, the telekinetic girl played by Millie Bobby Brown, steals boxes of Eggo waffles from a grocery store in the first season, and Hopper later leaves Eggos in the woods for her to find.

The informal 'Waffle House Index' is used to gauge what?

Disaster recovery after storms: emergency manager Craig Fugate coined the index, which judges how hard an area was hit by whether its Waffle House is serving the full menu, a limited one, or has shut.

Liège waffles get their caramelised crust from chunks of what baked into brioche-style dough?

Pearl sugar: its hard nibs do not melt away at baking heat like ordinary sugar, so those on the surface caramelise against the iron while the rest stay whole as crunchy pockets.

Which country's Våffeldagen, or Waffle Day, grew from a mishearing of Vårfrudagen, 'Our Lady's Day'?

Sweden: Vårfrudagen, the feast of the Annunciation on 25 March, slid into Våffeldagen in everyday speech, and the custom of eating waffles that day followed the name.

Bergische waffles from Germany's Bergisches Land are always made in what shape?

Heart: Bergische Waffeln are baked in a heart-shaped iron and served with cherries, whipped cream and sometimes rice pudding as part of the Bergische Kaffeetafel, a traditional Sunday afternoon feast.

Which chain's chicken sandwich was sold under licence at Waffle House in the 1960s, before the chain had restaurants of its own?

Chick-fil-A: S. Truett Cathy perfected the sandwich at his Dwarf House diner and licensed it to other restaurants, Waffle House among them, until he opened the first Chick-fil-A in a shopping mall in 1967.

Which TV chef, new to Waffle House in 2015, called it 'an irony-free zone'?

Anthony Bourdain was taken there late one night by Charleston chef Sean Brock for his series Parts Unknown, and Brock talked him through a 'tasting menu' that began with a pecan waffle.

Waffle House claims to serve more of which cut of steak than any other restaurant chain in the world?

T-bone: the chain calls itself the world's leading server of T-bone steaks, more than 10,000 a day by one count, which is some way from the breakfast its name promises.

What colour did Waffle House's founders paint their first restaurant, a colour the chain's signs still use?

Yellow: the founders painted the first restaurant that colour to catch the eye of passing motorists, and yellow signs and roofs have marked the chain's roadside diners ever since.

Walter Cleyman first served Brussels-style waffles in the US at the 1962 world's fair in which city?

Seattle: Walter Cleyman brought his family and his gas-fired irons from Belgium for the 1962 Century 21 Exposition and sold about half a million waffles there, four years after his success at Expo 58 in Brussels.