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Lemon Cream Wafers

A sweet wafer made from sugar syrup and lemon cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Lemon Cream Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar in a copper kettle.

  2. Stir until boiling.

  3. Wash down the sides of the kettle.

  4. Cover and boil for 5 minutes.

  5. Remove the cover.

  6. Cook until the mixture reaches 244°F (118°C).

Make the cream

  1. Pour the mixture onto a clean slab.

  2. Let the slab cool.

  3. Add grated lemon rinds and yellow color.

  4. Work briskly until creamy.

  5. Cover with a damp cloth.

  6. Let sit for 35 minutes.

  7. Knead the cream.

  8. Place the cream in a steam bath.

  9. Warm and stir until thin enough to drop.

Shape and set

  1. Use a funnel to drop the cream onto heavy wax paper in wafer size.

  2. Let the wafers cool.

  3. Place the cooled wafers on trays for use.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Crystal a sugar
Forms the sweet, crystalline base that sets into the wafer's structure when cooked and worked.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping prevent large sugar crystals so the cream stays smooth.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture reaches 244°F (118°C). Cooking sugar syrup to this temperature sets how much water remains, which controls the firmness of the cooled cream. Undercooking gives soft, sticky wafers; overcooking makes them hard and brittle.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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