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Dessert

Tea Waitrs

A thin dough pastry made from flour, sugar, egg, and cream, cut into shapes and cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Tea Waitrs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix flour, sugar, beaten egg, and cream until smooth.

  2. Knead the mixture until it is quite smooth.

  3. Roll out the dough as thin as possible.

Shape and cook

  1. Cut out shapes using a small lid.

  2. Cook on a griddle until done.

  3. Roll and tie them with thread to keep shape.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cold, untie the thread and place them on a bread plate.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure as it sets.
Cream
Adds moisture and fat, keeping the dough tender and pliable.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough as thin as possible. Thin dough cooks fully and quickly on the griddle and dries into a crisp, pliable sheet. Thick dough can stay raw in the middle while the outside over-browns.

“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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