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Dessert

Wafers

Thin sweet cakes made from powdered sugar, flour, brandy, vanilla, butter, egg yolks, and milk, cooked in a pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Chop the vanilla pod into small pieces and pound it with the sugar in a mortar.

  2. Sift the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Combine the egg yolks, vanilla-sugar mixture, sifted flour, and brandy in a pan and mix the combined ingredients well.

  4. Warm the milk in a basin and dissolve the butter in it, then pour the melted butter and warm milk into the pan with the other ingredients.

  5. Mix until the batter is thin and glossy.

Cook the wafers

  1. Heat the tongs over a stove or clear fire.

  2. Rub the inside surfaces of the tongs with butter or oil.

  3. Place a spoonful of batter in the tongs and close them immediately, ensuring the batter fills the wafer holes.

  4. Cook over the fire, turning occasionally, until the wafers are done.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

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

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

  4. Brandy + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together806 recipes

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

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter into a set, crisp wafer.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the wafers a tender texture and flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it cooks.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown as it cooks over the fire.
Milk
Adds moisture so the batter flows into a thin, glossy consistency.

The step that matters

Closing the tongs on the batter. A thin batter needs a hot, lightly greased iron so it sets quickly and releases cleanly. Closing the tongs right after placing the batter lets it fill the pattern before it spreads or sticks.

“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.

More wafers recipes

Walnut 51Almond 29Vanilla 24Nut 23Graham 21Geneva 20 See all 17 →

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