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Dessert

Nut Wafers

Nut wafers are sweet biscuits made from brown sugar, nuts, flour, butter, and egg, baked into thin wafers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Nut Wafers

two dozen wafers

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine one cup brown sugar, one cup chopped nuts, one tablespoonful flour, one tablespoonful butter, and one egg well beaten.

  2. Drop mixture on well oiled pans, leaving room for them to spread.

  3. Bake in a moderately slow oven.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

684Calories
19 gProtein
18 gFat
108 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 5 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutsnot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

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. See the original page.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the wafers brown as they bake.
Chopped nuts
Add body and crunch, and a toasty flavour as they bake.
Flour
Gives the mixture enough structure to hold its shape while it spreads.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and helps the wafers spread and crisp.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and helps set the wafers as they bake.

The step that matters

Leaving room for spreading. The mixture spreads considerably as it bakes. Dropping it too close together lets the wafers merge into one sheet and prevents them from crisping individually.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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