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Dessert

Fairy Wafers

Light, buttery wafers studded with raisins and hickory nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fairy Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the wafers

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter and sugar until creamy. Add the egg whites and milk, and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, stirring until combined.

  4. Drop teaspoonfuls of the mixture onto a greased baking sheet.

Top and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, combine the sugar, water, and egg white, then fold in the raisins and hickory nuts.

  2. Spoon this mixture on top of the wafers.

  3. Bake until lightly golden, being careful not to burn.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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
Creams with the sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Add structure and moisture, helping the batter bind and set when baked.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the wafers together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the wafers rise and stay light.
Sugar
Sweetens the wafers and promotes gentle browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until lightly golden, being careful not to burn. Sugar browns quickly and then darkens and turns bitter once it passes golden, so the wafers need close watching near the end of baking.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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