Skip to main content
Dessert

Riband Wafers

A thin, crisp lemon wafer made from powdered sugar, flour, and eggs, rolled and baked into scrolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Riband Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Rub the sugar on the lemons until the yellow part is removed.

  2. Crush the sugar to a powder and measure 1 pound.

  3. Mix the powdered sugar with the flour.

Make the dough

  1. Gradually add the beaten eggs, mixing yolks and whites separately first, then together.

  2. Roll the pastry out until it is as thin as a coin.

Shape and bake

  1. Stamp out rounds the size of a tumbler's top and place on well-buttered tins.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  3. When half baked, roll the wafers around your finger to form scrolls.

  4. Return to the oven to crisp for an additional 5 to 10 minutes.

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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the wafers brown and set crisp as they cool.
Fine flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin pastry together while it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness, helping it set and lift as it bakes.
Lemons
Their rubbed peel supplies fragrant oils that flavour the wafers.

The step that matters

Roll the wafers around your finger when half baked. Sugar-rich wafers stiffen and set as they cool, so they must be shaped while still warm and pliable. If they cool fully before rolling, they will crack instead of curling into scrolls.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, egg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes