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Dessert

Thin Biscuits or Tea Wafers

Thin biscuits or tea wafers made from flour, butter, egg, salt, lard, and chilled milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Thin Biscuits or Tea 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, butter, beaten egg, salt, and lard.

  2. Gradually add the chilled milk and mix until a smooth dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into balls the size of hickory nuts.

  2. Roll each ball very thin, about the size of a saucer.

  3. Prick the rolled dough with a fork and place on a baking sheet.

  4. Bake until lightly golden.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough, which sets crisp as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the wafers tender and gives them flavour.
Lard
Adds fat that shortens the dough, making the wafers tender and crisp.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness to the wafers.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough comes together into a smooth dough.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough very thin. Thin dough has little water to hold, so it dries and crisps in the oven. Thick pieces stay soft and bake unevenly.

“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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