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Spanish Wafers

Thin wafers fried in hot lard, made from eggs and flour, dusted with sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Spanish Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Gradually mix in enough flour to form a dough that can be rolled out thin.

Fry and serve

  1. Roll out the dough as thin as possible and cut it into squares using a jagged iron.

  2. Fry the squares in hot lard until golden brown.

  3. Place the wafers on a hot dish and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Bind the flour into a dough and add richness and structure to the wafers.
Flour
Forms the dough's structure, which holds its shape when rolled thin and fried.
Hot lard
Fries the squares quickly, driving off moisture and creating a crisp, golden-brown surface.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown lightly once fried.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thin. Thin dough cooks through and turns crisp in hot fat. Thick pieces stay doughy inside and can brown on the outside before they are cooked.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Jalapenofits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

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