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Dessert

Risen Wafers

A light, airy wafer made from eggs, sweet milk, yeast, butter, and flour, baked over coals.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Risen Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add the sweet milk, yeast, and butter, then mix well.

  3. Stir in enough sifted flour to make a stiff dough.

Cook the wafers

  1. Grease the wafer irons well.

  2. Once the dough has risen, place a small lump in the irons, then close the irons.

  3. Bake over hot coals, turning after a few minutes to cook both sides evenly.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it cooks.
Yeast
Produces gas that leavens the dough so the wafers rise and turn light.
Sifted flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the stiff dough its structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps the wafers brown.
Sweet milk
Supplies moisture and milk sugars that help the wafers brown in the iron.

The step that matters

Turn after a few minutes. Wafer irons over coals heat unevenly. Turning partway through lets both sides cook at a similar rate, so one side does not scorch while the other stays pale or raw.

“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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