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Dessert

Vanilla Wafers

Vanilla wafers are thin, crisp cookies made from a dough of sugar, butter, egg, milk, vanilla, and leavening, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Vanilla Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the dough

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Beat in egg, milk, and vanilla extract until well combined.

  4. Mix in cream of tartar and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add flour until dough is easy to roll out.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll dough to a thin layer and cut into pieces measuring 3 inches by 1 inch.

  2. Place cut wafers on baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 trap air and give the wafers a tender, crisp texture.
White sugar
Creams with the butter and adds sweetness while helping the wafers brown.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure to hold the wafers together.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough and works with baking soda to help the wafers rise lightly.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled thin and cut cleanly.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Flour develops gluten as it is worked in, so adding it too quickly or overmixing can make the dough tough. Stopping once it is easy to roll keeps the wafers tender and crisp.

“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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