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Dessert

Oat Meal Wafees

A baked oatmeal wafer made with oat meal, flour, brown sugar, butter, spices, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Oat Meal Wafees

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the oat meal and flour together.

  2. Rub in the butter and brown sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the ground spice, salt, and Magic Soda.

  4. Moisten the mixture slightly with cold water.

  5. Add more flour as needed to achieve a firm dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out a small piece of dough as thin as possible.

  2. Cut into shapes with a sharp fluted cutter.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Oat meal
Provides the main body and a crisp, hearty texture to the wafers.
Flour
Gives the dough structure so it holds its shape when rolled and cut.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the wafers brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the wafers rich and tender.
Magic soda
Acts as a raising agent that helps the wafers lighten and brown.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thin. Thin dough dries out and crisps during baking, while thick pieces stay soft in the middle. Rolling as thin as possible gives the crisp texture the wafers need.

“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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