Skip to main content
Dessert

Flemish Wafers

A light, yeasted waffle made with egg yolks, lemon zest, and optional cream, dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. In a bowl, mix the flour with warm milk and yeast, straining the yeast through a sieve.

  2. Make a soft, smooth paste and let it rise in a warm place.

  3. Once risen, add the egg yolks and lemon zest rubbed into the sugar.

  4. Whip the reserved egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the mixture.

  5. If desired, add cream and beat until combined.

  6. Return the mixture to the warm place to rise again until doubled in size.

Cook and serve

  1. Preheat your waffle irons and lightly grease them with butter.

  2. Fill one side of the irons with the batter and cook until golden brown.

  3. Turn the wafers to cook the other side, then remove and place on a plate.

  4. Dust with powdered sugar and add any desired flavoring.

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the batter once it is mixed into a paste.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise and become light.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lightness and airy texture to the waffles.
Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness, and help the batter set and brown.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and helps the waffles brown and release from the irons.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the waffles brown during cooking.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives the waffles lightness. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, so fold gently and keep the batter airy.

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.

You might also like

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