Skip to main content
Dessert

Miss Lucy Bradshaw

Almond wafers made from pastry flour, butter, milk, vanilla extract, powdered sugar, and blanched almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Young Men's Christian Association (Montpelier, Vt.). Women of the Auxiliary · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Miss Lucy Bradshaw

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream half a cupful of butter.

  2. Add slowly one cupful of powdered sugar.

  3. Add half a cupful of milk, drop by drop.

  4. Add two cupfuls of pastry flour.

  5. Add half a teaspoonful of vanilla extract.

Bake and shape

  1. Spread the mixture very thin on the bottom of a dripping pan, inverted and buttered, marking in squares, and sprinkle with blanched almonds chopped fine.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven about five minutes.

  3. As soon as baked, place pan on back of range, and roll wafers into a tubular or cornucopia shape while they are still warm.

By Young Men's Christian Association (Montpelier, Vt.). Women of the Auxiliary. 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Pastry flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the thin wafer its structure.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the wafer tender and crisp.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the wafer brown in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture so the batter can be spread very thin.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma to the wafer.

The step that matters

Shaping the wafers while warm. Wafers rich in sugar and fat stiffen and turn brittle as they cool, so they must be rolled right after baking while still pliable.

“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.

More almond wafers recipes

Rolled 6 See all 29 →

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes