Skip to main content
Dessert

German Waffles

A sweet batter made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, salt, lemon peel, and beaten egg whites, baked in a waffle iron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

German Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together.

  2. Add the egg yolks one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the milk and sifted flour mixed with baking powder and salt.

  4. Add the grated lemon peel.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease the waffle iron with butter using a cloth.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

  3. Sprinkle with sugar mixed with cinnamon and lemon peel.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to build a tender, rich crumb and add flavour.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the batter, helping it bind smoothly.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the batter and help the waffles rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the waffle together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the waffles rise and turn light.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites last. Whites hold air only when whipped; folding gently keeps that air in the batter so the waffles stay light. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam and yields dense, flat waffles.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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