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Dessert

Cream Wafers

Thin wafers made from lard, eggs, flour, and cinnamon, filled with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Warm the lard without letting it become oily.

  2. Work in the eggs one at a time until well combined.

  3. Add the sifted flour and ground cinnamon, mixing to a smooth paste.

Bake and shape

  1. Heat a wafer iron and place a spoonful of the paste inside.

  2. Close the iron and bake the wafer, trimming the edges before opening.

  3. Quickly roll the wafer into a cone shape.

Fill and serve

  1. Once all wafers are cooked, fill them with whipped cream.

  2. Arrange the filled wafers on a napkin and serve.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + cinnamontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Egg and flour 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

Lard
Adds fat that keeps the paste tender and helps the wafers release and crisp.
Eggs
Provide structure and binding so the paste holds together while baking.
Sifted flour
Forms the main structure of the wafer as it sets in the iron.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavor to the wafer.

The step that matters

Quickly roll the wafer into a cone shape. Wafers stiffen and become brittle as they cool, so they must be shaped while still hot and pliable or they will crack.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour. 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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