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Dessert

Nut Wafers

Nut wafers are crisp cookies made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, salt, milk, peanuts, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Nut Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl using a wooden spoon.

  2. Gradually add the sugar while stirring and beating constantly.

  3. Mix in the beaten eggs until well combined.

  4. Sift together the baking powder, salt, and pastry flour, then add to the mixture.

  5. Stir in the milk, chopped peanuts, and lemon juice until just combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop teaspoonfuls of the batter onto an ungreased baking sheet, spacing them one inch apart.

  2. Place half a peanut on top of each cookie.

  3. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 15 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + milktop 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the wafers a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the wafers rise and turn light.
Pastry flour
Provides low-protein structure, keeping the wafers tender rather than tough.
Finely chopped peanuts
Add nutty flavor and a bit of texture throughout the wafers.

The step that matters

Stirring in the milk, peanuts, and lemon juice. Mixing only until just combined keeps the batter tender. Overworking the flour develops gluten, which makes the wafers tough and dense.

Swap the peanut

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

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

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