Skip to main content
Dessert

Spanish Wafers

A sweet wafer made with flour, sugar, eggs, cream, chocolate, vanilla, and water, baked and shaped into cornucopias.

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

Why it works: Chocolate and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Spanish Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine flour, sugar, vanilla, eggs, and cream in a bowl until smooth and elastic.

  2. Dissolve chocolate in ½ cup boiling water, then add to the mixture.

  3. Whisk everything together for 10 minutes.

Bake and shape

  1. Bake the wafers as directed in your preferred method.

  2. Once baked, curl them into the shape of cornucopias using a wooden form.

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. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

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

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

  4. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 wafer together as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm and elastic when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the wafers brown during baking.
Chocolate
Gives the wafers their chocolate flavour and colour.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the texture of the batter.

The step that matters

Shaping the wafers after baking. Baked wafers stiffen and turn brittle as they cool, so they must be curled while still warm and pliable, or they may crack or break.

“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

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipes