Cold Winter Days Were Golden For Cincinnati’s Hot-Waffle Men

From "Cincinnati Times-Star", January 31, 1922

In the summer of 1918, the New York Giants had just split a four-game series at Redland Field. Heine Zimmerman, the Giants’ infielder, awaited a ride at the corner of Fifth and Elm streets when he was startled by the sudden blast of a bugle. The Cincinnati Post [July 22, 1918] tattled:

“Zim, in a patriotic mood, stood at attention with hat in hand and held over his heart. There followed giggles—the mean things—and Heine started after one of the gigglers. He happened to glance around the corner and, lo! found a hot-waffle man blowing a bugle in an effort to drum up trade.”

Poor Zim! He was certainly familiar with hot waffle men. Vendors of those tasty treats were ubiquitous at a time when pedestrians thronged the streets of all major cities. That bugle call was unique to Cincinnati, however, and there was a story behind it. In an article recounting the distinctive cries of Cincinnati’s street vendors – the sauerkraut, fruit and vegetable salesmen, the ragman and the scissor-grinder – the Enquirer [June 2, 1895] gives the backstory:

“There is a hot-waffle man who used to have a distinctive cry, but he tried to construct one more bloodcurdling than any in the city, injuring his voice so that he had to exchange it for a brass horn on which he executes the old-time stage call. What it has to do with waffles is hard to tell, but it wakes people up and arouses their curiosity sufficiently to make them run to the windows to find out what has broken loose.”

For many years, the hot-waffle man was associated not so much with breakfast as with cold weather. The going rate was a nickel for four waffles, and an enterprising hot-waffle man could serve a lot of pastries. The Cincinnati Commercial-Gazette [January 27, 1889] interviewed a local purveyor, who said:

“I sell about a tousan’ waffles a day but on cold days I sell fifteen hundred, maybe two tousan’. Rainy weather is bad for my business, but on a bright cold day I sell lots of waffles.”

Do the math and those nickels add up. A thousand waffles translates into 250 nickels or $12.50 a day, at a time when a lot of factory workers slaved away for ten dollars a week. The hot-waffle man admitted to the Commercial-Gazette that he made a decent living and, as proof, all his sons were in school. In other words, the boys didn’t have to drop out to support the family.

What would you get for your nickel? A waffle is, after all, a waffle. Or is it? From contemporary descriptions, it appears that the street waffles of yore were somewhat smaller than what we find today in our local diner. They were sometimes square rather than round and definitely thinner and crisper than modern specimens. The granddaughter of a Cincinnati hot-waffle man remembered her grandfather used to stand his waffles on edge to ensure they were crisp enough to suit the tastes of his regular customers. According to the old reports, toppings were limited to a dusting of powdered sugar, sometimes with a bit of cinnamon added.  In practice, there might have been all sorts of unregistered ingredients. The Cincinnati Commercial [February 25, 1880] described a busy hot-waffle man with far more detail than the reader’s appetite would prefer:

“The first street baker of waffles was not a very cleanly looking individual, and the fastidious might have objected to his greasing his waffle iron with a dirty looking rag tied to the end of a stick, and also to the fact that the ashes from his pipe would keep falling into his waffle batter; but the white sugar sprinkled from a tin dredge box over the surface of the well-browned waffle covered up a great deal of dirt, and his cookies went off like hot cakes, as they were.”

From "Stockton (California) Record", October 19, 1925

A dash of pipe ash might have been forgiven, but Cincinnati’s hot-waffle men were sometimes forced to contend with mischievous adulterants, as Gustave Schwind discovered to his dismay, according to the Cincinnati Post [September 12, 1897]:

“A number of boys employed in a shoe factory on North Street, have been perpetrating practical jokes on G. Schwind, who operates a waffle wagon under the factory windows. While the dough is exposed in his waffle irons the jokers threw down into it from the sixth floor a handful of sharp tacks. These, though small enough to be overlooked in the dough, are still large enough to do much damage. The waffle dealer stated that he has complained to the police without relief.”

There were more than a few hot-waffle men in Cincinnati at the height of their popularity, with most servicing routes along the downtown streets lined with offices and factories. Latecomers were forced to take their waffle irons out into the suburbs, to eke out a somewhat slimmer business from schoolchildren and even households. They weren’t always welcome, as the Enquirer [June 2, 1895] noted:

“[The hot-waffle man] has an uncomfortable delusion that daylight and waffles are due at the same time and wakes people up along the streets he frequents when they don’t want waffles and do want sleep. He is authority for the statement that he has never been shot at, which speaks well for the good nature of Cincinnatians.”

By 1928, it might have seemed that the days of the hot-waffle man had passed. The Cincinnati Post, in its “Do You Remember” series, recalled the hot-waffle man and his horn as if they had faded into history. And then, two years later, the Enquirer [August 9, 1930] carried a squib suggesting he—or at least his horn—was still active:

“Well! Well! We saw ‘em both on Vine Street the other day, the hot-waffle man and his bugle, and a lady driving an ancient electric coupe.”

Twenty years on, and the hot-waffle man was definitely only a memory, kept alive by Julia Zimmerer of Madeira, who mailed an inquiry to Sara MacDuff Austin, women’s page editor of the Cincinnati Post. Mrs. Zimmerer [November 3,1949] inquired whether anyone had a recipe for the bygone tasty pastries proffered by the hot-waffle man from his cart in downtown Cincinnati around 1908. That simple request unleashed a flood of memories and mail for Editor Austin, who shared the correspondence for the next month in her weekly “Housekeeping” column. On November 10, 1949, she published the following recipe from Nellie Pangburn of Bethel, Ohio, who swore that this formula produced waffles exactly like those she remembered enjoying from the long-ago street vendor:

“Two eggs, 1 teaspoon sugar, ¼ teaspoon salt, 1 cup milk, 1 cup flour. Stir eggs well with fork, add sugar, then flour and milk. Beat until smooth. This will be very thin. To fry: Put the Rosette iron in the fat and get it hot as the fat heats. When hot dip the iron in batter just level with the top edge and fry. You can only fry one at a time, but it only takes a second if the fat is hot. Dust with powdered sugar. Makes about 40.”