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Almond Wafers

Almond wafers are thin baked almond cakes made with powdered sugar, flour, eggs, and flavored with essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Almond Wafers

Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Cut the almonds into very fine fillets.

  2. Wet the almonds with the eggs, yolks and whites mixed together.

  3. Add the powdered sugar and flour, then mix well with a drop of essence.

Bake and shape

  1. Lightly butter a copper or tinned plate and spread the mixture as thinly as possible.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

  3. Cut into long squares and roll them on pieces of wood or shape as desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Almonds
Form the bulk of the wafer and give it a crisp, nutty texture when baked.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the wafers brown and crisp as they bake.
Flour
Binds the almonds and sugar so the thin batter holds together while baking.
Eggs
Bind the almond mixture and help it set into a thin, firm sheet.

The step that matters

Spread the mixture as thinly as possible. A thin layer bakes evenly and turns crisp and brittle; a thick layer stays soft in the middle and browns unevenly before it sets.

“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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