Skip to main content
Dessert

Wafers

A light, lemon-flavored wafer made from flour, butter, powdered sugar, lemon zest, juice, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine flour, butter, and powdered sugar in a bowl.

  2. Rub together until well mixed.

  3. Add lemon rinds, lemon juice, and eggs.

  4. Mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon until smooth.

  5. Roll the mixture into small cakes.

Bake the wafers

  1. Preheat wafer tongs over a stove or fire.

  2. Grease the insides with butter or olive oil.

  3. Place the paste in the tongs.

  4. Close the tongs.

  5. Cook over the fire, turning occasionally until both sides are golden.

  6. Once baked, remove the wafers.

  7. Scrape the edges.

Shape and dry

  1. Roll them on a small stick.

  2. Place the rolled wafers on a sieve.

  3. Dry them in a warm oven.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the wafer together as it bakes.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the dough bind.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the wafers and dissolves smoothly into the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set.
Lemon rinds and juice
Provide the bright lemon aroma and a tangy acidity.

The step that matters

Cooking the wafers over the fire. The tongs must be hot and the paste thin enough to bake quickly. Turning them often keeps both sides evenly golden instead of scorched or pale.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes