Skip to main content
Dessert

Peanut Wafers

A baked wafer made with sugar, milk, butter, flour, and finely chopped peanuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Peanut Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make and spread the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix together the sugar, milk, butter, and flour until smooth.

  2. Spread the mixture thinly on well-buttered baking sheets using a knife blade.

  3. Sprinkle the finely chopped peanuts evenly over the top.

Bake and cut

  1. Bake until slightly browned.

  2. Remove from the oven and cut into narrow strips while still warm.

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 + peanuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin wafer together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and helps the wafers brown in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and promotes browning on the surface of the wafers.
Milk
Adds moisture so the batter spreads smoothly and bakes evenly.
Peanuts
Provide crunch and a nutty flavour on the wafer's top surface.

The step that matters

Bake until slightly browned. Thin batter spread over the sheets can go from golden to burnt quickly, since sugar browns and darkens fast at high heat. Checking early keeps the wafers crisp rather than bitter.

Swap the peanut

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

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

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

Peanut CandyPeanut Candy82 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes