Skip to main content
Dessert

Wafer Cakes

Wafer cakes are thin, sweet pastries made from a stiff batter of powdered sugar, butter, eggs, flour, spices, and lemon oil or rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Wafer Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix powdered sugar and butter until smooth.

  2. Add beaten eggs and mix until light.

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

  4. Add nutmeg, cinnamon, and oil of lemon or rose water.

Bake the wafers

  1. Heat the wafer iron and grease it with butter.

  2. Pour 2 large tablespoons of batter into the iron and close it.

  3. Turn the iron to bake both sides until light brown.

  4. Carefully remove wafers with a knife.

  5. Dust with powdered sugar and roll around a stick while warm.

Serve

  1. For serving, fill with whipped cream and seal ends with preserved strawberries.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs add lift and structure, lightening the batter as they set in the iron.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and greasing the iron keeps the wafers from sticking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together into a stiff, crisp wafer.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the wafers brown lightly on the iron.

The step that matters

Turn the iron to bake both sides until light brown. Baking evenly on both faces sets the batter fully and browns it lightly. Removing the wafers too early leaves them soft and prone to tearing, while over-browning makes them bitter and brittle.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes