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Dessert

Flemish Wafers

A light, airy waffle made with flour, butter, eggs, yeast, and lemon zest, dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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, combine the flour and warm milk with the yeast, straining the yeast through a sieve.

  2. Mix until the paste is soft and smooth, then let it rise in a warm place.

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

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

  5. If desired, add the cream and beat it in like the eggs.

  6. Let the paste 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, then flip to cook the other side.

  3. Remove the wafers and place them on a plate, dusting with powdered sugar and 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 that holds the waffles together.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, helping the waffles brown and taste tender.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and help the waffles rise and stay airy.
Yeast
Produces gas as the paste rises, giving the waffles an open, airy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and golden browning, and keeps the irons from sticking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the waffles brown in the iron.

The step that matters

Let the paste rise until doubled. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas. If the paste is under-risen, the waffles will be dense; the second rise after folding in egg whites builds the airy texture.

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.

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