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Dessert

Hotel Waffles

A batter of flour, milk or water, yeast, sugar or syrup, and melted lard or butter, baked in a waffle iron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Hotel Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, milk or water, yeast, sugar or syrup, and melted lard or butter.

  2. Mix until smooth and let the batter rise until doubled in size.

Cook

  1. Preheat your waffle iron and grease it lightly if desired.

  2. Pour the batter into the waffle iron and cook according to the manufacturer's instructions until golden brown.

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. Milk + buttertop 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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the waffle together as it cooks.
Milk or water
Hydrates the flour so the batter forms a pourable, workable mixture.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise and gives the waffles an airy texture.
Sugar or syrup
Adds sweetness and feeds the yeast, and helps the waffles brown.
Melted lard or butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the waffles and adds richness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise until doubled in size. Yeast gas creates the airy structure of the waffle. If the batter is under-risen, the waffles turn out dense and heavy.

“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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