Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Wafers

A sweet, lemon‑flavored wafer made by spreading a lemon‑sugar‑egg white mixture on paper and curling it over heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Squeeze the lemons into a bowl.

  2. Pound and sift the sugar, then mix it with the lemon juice.

  3. Add the egg white and mix well with a wooden spoon until smooth.

Spread and cut

  1. Place a sheet of wafer paper on a baking tray.

  2. Spread a spoonful of the mixture evenly over the paper.

  3. Cut the spread mixture into twelve pieces.

Curl and set

  1. Place the pieces on a stick over a hot stove, paste side up, and let them curl.

  2. Once half curled, carefully transfer them to a sieve to stand upright.

  3. Leave them on the hot stove all day until fully curled and ready to use.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sugar
Sweetens the wafers and helps them dry to a crisp, brittle texture.
Egg white
Adds protein that binds the mixture and helps it set firm when heated.
Lemons
Provide the juice that gives the wafers their bright, sharp lemon flavour.

The step that matters

Curling the pieces over the stove. The pieces must be heated while still pliable, then lifted before they cool and harden. Once half curled, they need careful handling so they keep their shape as they set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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