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Date Wafers

Thin oatmeal dough wafers folded around a cooked date filling, cut into squares and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Date Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the date filling

  1. Stone the dates and boil them with 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water until smooth.

  2. Let the date mixture cool.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine oatmeal, flour, 1 cup of sugar, and salt.

  2. Work in the lard and butter until the mixture resembles pie crust.

  3. Moisten the mixture with sour milk and dissolved baking soda.

  4. Roll the dough very thin.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread half of the dough with the date pulp, then fold the other half over.

  2. Cut into squares.

  3. Bake on an upside-down pan at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Milk + datestop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Oatmeal
Forms the bulk of the dough, giving a hearty, tender-chewy texture.
Flour
Provides structure so the dough can be rolled thin and hold its shape.
Lard and butter
Fat that is worked into the flour, tenderizing the dough and giving a crumbly, flaky texture.
Sour milk
Acidic liquid that moistens the dough and reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the dough and aids browning.
Dates or figs
Sweet, thick pulp that forms the moist filling once cooked smooth.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough very thin. Thin dough bakes evenly and crisps, while thick dough stays doughy in the centre and does not brown properly before the filling is set.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, sugar. 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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