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Dessert

Baked on Wafer Paper

A chocolate and almond meringue baked on wafer paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Baked on Wafer Paper

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then mix in the sugar to form a meringue.

  2. Add the melted chocolate and crushed almonds to the meringue, and mix well.

Shape and dust

  1. Prepare baking pans by greasing them with melted lard and dusting with flour.

  2. Dress the mixture onto the pans in large finger shapes, larger than lady-fingers.

  3. Dredge lightly with powdered sugar and let stand for 10 to 15 minutes.

  4. Turn the pans to shake off excess sugar.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until done.

  2. Remove from the pans with a palette knife while warm.

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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + chocolatetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,808 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 into a meringue that gives the cookies their light, airy structure.
Almonds
Provide bulk and nutty flavor, and add body to the crumb.
Chocolate
Adds rich flavor and fat that keeps the cookies tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and stabilizes the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Turning the pans to shake off excess sugar. Powdered sugar dusted on the surface can clump or dissolve unevenly if left too long or not removed. Shaking off the excess before baking leaves a thin, even sugar crust rather than a sticky or patchy one.

“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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