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Dessert

Harding's Waffles

A batter waffle made with milk, flour, eggs, sugar, butter, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Harding's Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs, then add sugar and salt.

  2. Melt the butter and mix it with the milk and flour.

  3. Just before baking, fold in the beaten egg whites and baking powder.

Bake

  1. Bake on a hot waffle iron.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Yolks add richness and the whites, beaten, lighten the batter for a tender texture.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the waffle together once baked.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it spreads in the iron.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the waffle rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps the surface brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the waffle brown at the surface.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites and baking powder just before baking. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it is wet, and beaten egg whites slowly lose their air. Waiting until the batter goes into the hot iron keeps both lift-producing elements working for the rise.

“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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