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Dessert

Lemon Wafers

A light, citrusy wafer made from lemon juice, sugar, and egg white, baked until crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemons into a bowl.

  2. Pound and sift the sugar, then mix it with the lemon juice.

  3. Add the egg white and mix well with a wooden spoon until thick.

Shape the wafers

  1. Place a sheet of wafer paper on a baking sheet.

  2. Spread a spoonful of the mixture evenly over the wafer paper.

  3. Cut the mixture into twelve pieces.

Bake and shape

  1. Place the baking sheet in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) with the paste side up.

  2. When the edges start to curl, carefully remove them and stand them upright in a sieve.

  3. Leave them in the oven for one day until fully curled and done.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Lemons
Provide the juice that gives the wafers their sharp, bright acidity and flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dries, helps the wafers become crisp.
Egg white
Thickens and binds the mixture so it spreads as a paste rather than running.
Wafer paper
Serves as the edible base that holds the spread mixture while it bakes.

The step that matters

Remove and shape when the edges start to curl. The wafers are pliable while warm and set firm as they cool, so they must be lifted and stood upright promptly once the edges begin to curl.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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