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Dessert

Wafers, Flemish

A light, sweet wafer made with flour, sugar, lemon zest, milk, yeast, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Wafers, Flemish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavored sugar

  1. Rub sugar on lemon rind until yellow part removed, then crush to powder.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, salt, and flavored sugar.

  2. Gradually add lukewarm milk and yeast, mixing to form a soft dough.

  3. Cover dough and let rise on hearth until doubled in size.

  4. Work in softened butter, beaten egg yolks, then fold in beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake wafers for 3 to 4 minutes until golden.

  2. Serve hot, dusting with powdered sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the wafers together.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the wafers and enriches their flavor.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dough with fat and moisture.
Egg whites
Trap air when folded in, adding lightness to the wafers.
Sugar
Sweetens the wafers and promotes golden browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas and expand the dough; rising too little leaves the wafers dense, while the dough should be covered so its surface does not dry out.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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