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Dessert

Geneva Wafers

A light pastry made from butter, flour, sugar, milk, eggs, and preserve, baked into wafer shapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Geneva Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Whisk two eggs, three ounces of butter, three ounces of flour, and three ounces of pounded sugar together.

  2. Beat the butter to a cream before adding it to the eggs. Gradually add the flour and sifted sugar, mixing well.

Bake and shape

  1. Butter a baking sheet and drop a teaspoonful of the mixture onto it, leaving space between each spoonful.

  2. Bake in a cool oven, watching the pieces of paste; when half done, roll them up like wafers and place them in a small wedge of bread or piece of wood to keep their shape.

  3. Return the wafers to the oven until crisp.

Serve

  1. Before serving, remove the bread, put a spoonful of preserve in the widest end, and fill up with whipped cream.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

845Calories
28 gProtein
27 gFat
121 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

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

By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and lift as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and creaming it helps trap air for a lighter texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the wafers together as they bake.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the wafers and helps them brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Rolling the wafers while half done. The paste must be partly set but still pliable. If it is too soft it tears, and if it has cooled and hardened it cracks when rolled.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, milk, 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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