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Dessert

Flemish Wafers

A light, airy waffle made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, yeast, milk, lemon zest, and optional cream, dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Flemish Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour with warm milk and strained yeast to form a soft, smooth paste.

  2. Let the paste rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

  3. Add the egg yolks and lemon zest rubbed into the sugar. Mix well.

  4. Whip the reserved egg whites to stiff peaks.

  5. Gently fold the whipped egg whites into the mixture.

  6. Add 1 tablespoon of cream, beaten like the eggs. Mix gently.

Cook and serve

  1. Preheat the waffle irons.

  2. Lightly grease the waffle irons with butter.

  3. Fill one side of the irons with the batter.

  4. Cook over heat until golden brown.

  5. Turn the irons to cook the other side.

  6. Remove the wafers and place them on a plate.

  7. Dust the wafers with powdered sugar.

  8. Add any desired flavoring to the sugar.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Flour
Forms the paste and gives the waffles their structure as it sets in cooking.
Yeast
Produces gas during the rise, making the batter light and airy.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lightness and help the waffles puff.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, which tenderize the crumb and aid browning.
Butter
Greases the irons and adds richness and browning to the waffle surface.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the waffles brown in the hot irons.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that makes the batter light. Stirring them in vigorously knocks out that air, leaving dense waffles, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, milk, 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.

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