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Dessert

Dainty Wafers

A simple, lightly sweetened wafer cookie made from flour, milk, butter, and baking powder.

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

Dainty Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour, sweet milk, salt, melted butter, and baking powder.

  2. If desired, add the beaten egg white for extra fluffiness.

  3. Stir until you have a stiff batter.

Cook the wafers

  1. Drop a scant teaspoonful of batter onto slightly greased wafer irons.

  2. Cook 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. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter together as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the wafers rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor and browning.
Egg white
Beaten to a froth, it adds air for extra fluffiness in the wafers.

The step that matters

Drop a scant teaspoonful of batter onto slightly greased wafer irons.. Too much batter overflows and bakes unevenly, while too little leaves thin, weak wafers. Light greasing keeps the wafers from sticking and tearing when opened.

“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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