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Dessert

Neapolitan Wafers

A light, sweet wafer made with flour, sugar, butter, olive oil, eggs, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Neapolitan Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add the eggs (both yolks and whites) to the mixture.

  3. Melt the butter in warm water and add it along with the olive oil. Stir until well combined.

  4. Add essence of cinnamon and cloves to taste.

Cook and cool

  1. Pour the batter into a heated wafer iron and cook until golden brown.

  2. Remove from the iron and let cool on a 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Olive + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Olive + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,501 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the thin wafer together as it sets.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help the batter set and bind when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and helps the wafers brown and crisp.
Sugar
Sweetens the wafers and promotes browning in the hot iron.
Olive oil
Adds fat that keeps the batter loose and helps the wafers release and crisp.

The step that matters

Cooking in the heated wafer iron until golden brown. The iron must be hot enough to set the thin batter quickly. Too little heat leaves the wafers pale and soft, while too long a cook can scorch the sugar and make them brittle or bitter.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, olive, egg, cinnamon. 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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