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Almond Wafers

A thin almond-based wafer baked until golden, cut into squares and rolled into hollow shapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Almond Wafers

Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Cut the almonds into very fine fillets.

  2. Wet the almonds with the eggs, yolks and whites mixed together.

  3. Add the powdered sugar and flour, and mix well with a drop of essence if desired.

Bake and shape

  1. Lightly butter a copper or tinned plate and spread the mixture as thinly as possible.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

  3. Cut into long squares and roll them on pieces of wood to form hollow pillars or any shape you prefer.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Almonds
Form the main body of the wafer and give it a crisp, nutty bite.
Eggs
Bind the almonds and sugar together so the thin mixture holds its shape.
Flour
Adds body to the batter so the thin wafers hold together during baking.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the wafers and helps them brown evenly in the oven.

The step that matters

Spread the mixture as thinly as possible. A thin layer bakes quickly and evenly into a crisp wafer. A thick layer stays soft in the middle and may burn at the edges before it is cooked through, and it will be too stiff to roll into shapes after baking.

“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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