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Dessert

Wafer Biscuits

A light biscuit made from sugar, flour, egg whites, and spices, baked into wafer-like shapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Wafer Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slack oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  3. Melt the sugar and sift it through a fine sieve.

  4. Mix the melted sugar with the flour, cinnamon, and cloves to form a liquid paste.

  5. Butter copper plates lightly.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop the paste onto the plates in penny-sized drops, spaced four inches apart.

  2. Spread each drop with your finger to make them larger and about the thickness of wafers.

  3. Bake until they are a fine color.

  4. Optionally, roll them into little horns or use them to decorate a cream.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg whites
Whipped to a frothy foam that lightens the paste and helps the wafers rise slightly.
Sugar
Melted and sweetens the wafers while helping them crisp and brown as they bake.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin wafers together once baked.

The step that matters

Spreading the drops. Each drop must be spread evenly to the same thin thickness; uneven drops bake unevenly, with thick spots staying soft and thin spots burning before the wafers are set.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, 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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