Skip to main content
Dessert

French Wafers

A light, vanilla-flavored wafer made with flour, sugar, egg whites, cream, brandy, and baked in a wafer iron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

French Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the flour, sifted sugar, vanilla sugar, salt, egg whites, and cream until smooth.

  2. Add the brandy and mix vigorously for 10 minutes.

Bake and shape

  1. Bake the batter in a wafer iron until golden brown.

  2. Immediately roll the wafers around a stick to shape them.

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Vanilla + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together806 recipes

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

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin batter together as it bakes.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift, helping the wafers set crisp when baked.
Sugar
Promotes browning in the iron and gives the wafers their sweetness.
Single cream
Adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Shaping the wafers while hot. Baked wafers become brittle as they cool and set, so they must be rolled immediately after leaving the iron, while still pliable enough to bend without cracking.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Apricotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, brandy, egg, cream. 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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesBrandy CreamBrandy Cream21 recipesBrandy PuddingBrandy Pudding13 recipes