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Dessert

Oat Wafers

A baked oat wafer made with egg, sugar, nutmeg, vanilla, baking powder, and rolled oats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and oats are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,532 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Oat Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg very lightly.

  2. Slowly add sugar, nutmeg, and baking powder, which have been mixed.

  3. Then add melted fat, vanilla, and rolled oats.

Bake and serve

  1. Spread in a well greased cake pan.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes or until crisp and brown.

  3. Mark into squares and remove from the pan before they become hard.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Vanilla + oatstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Nutmeg + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + oatstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together588 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the mixture and helps hold the wafers together as they set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the wafers brown and crisp in the oven.
Melted fat
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the wafers crisp rather than dry out.
Baking powder
Produces gas that lightens the batter so the wafers are not dense.
Rolled oats
Provides the bulk and chewy-crisp texture of the wafer.

The step that matters

Remove from the pan before they become hard. Once the baked wafers cool and harden in the pan they stick and break. Marking the squares and lifting them out while still slightly soft keeps them intact.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, vanilla, oats):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, vanilla, oats. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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