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Dessert

Wafers

A thin sweet cookie made by cooking a batter of vanilla, sugar, flour, eggs, butter, milk, and brandy on an iron.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cut the vanilla pods into small pieces and pound them with some sugar.

  2. Sift the mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl.

  3. Add flour, egg yolks, and brandy to the bowl and stir until combined.

  4. Dissolve the butter in warm milk and add it to the mixture, stirring until smooth and thin.

Cook the wafers

  1. Heat an engraved iron over a charcoal fire and lightly grease it with butter or pork rind.

  2. Pour a spoonful of batter onto the iron, ensuring it spreads evenly.

  3. Close the iron gently and cook until golden brown, then flip to cook the other side.

  4. Remove the wafer from the iron and place it on a round wooden surface.

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. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + brandytop 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).

Vanilla and sugar 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 while setting into a crisp sheet.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps keep the iron greased.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin batter together as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the wafers and helps them brown as they cook.
Milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown, then flip. The batter is thin and cooks quickly on a hot iron, so pressing the iron gently and watching the colour prevents burning or uneven cooking on either side.

“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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