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Dessert

Wafers— Another Recipe

Thin crisp wafer cookies made from a batter of sugar, water, eggs, flour, lemon peel, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Wafers— Another Recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the cold water.

  2. Beat the eggs and flour into a batter, thinning it with the sugar water until smooth.

  3. Strain the batter through a fine sieve.

  4. Add the grated lemon peel and sherry, or leave plain.

Cook the wafers

  1. Preheat your tongs by rubbing them with butter.

  2. Pour a small amount of batter onto the hot tongs and close them.

  3. Cook until the wafers are light brown.

  4. Remove the wafers and roll them on a small round stick.

  5. Stand them on their ends in a sieve to dry slightly in the stove.

  6. Store in a warm place in a tin box.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and set into a thin, crisp structure when cooked.
Flour
Gives the batter body so it holds its shape on the hot tongs.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the wafers brown as they cook.
Thick cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the wafers a tender texture.

The step that matters

Cooking on the hot tongs. The tongs must be hot enough before the batter goes on, so the thin layer sets and browns quickly. Batter poured onto cool tongs spreads unevenly and cooks pale and soft. Too much batter also spoils the thin, crisp texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, cream, sherry. 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.

More wafers recipes

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

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