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Dessert

Breakfast Cakes

A thin batter of sugar, eggs, rose water, and flour is cooked in a wafer iron to make sweet breakfast cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Breakfast Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix sugar, beaten eggs, rose water, and sifted flour in a bowl to make a thin batter.

  2. Stir the batter with a wooden spoon until smooth and light.

Cook the wafers

  1. Heat the wafer iron and grease it with butter using a linen rag.

  2. Fill the iron with batter, close it, and place it in the fire to heat both sides.

  3. Cook for about two minutes, turning the iron frequently if needed.

Finish and roll

  1. Sprinkle the cooked wafer with powdered sugar and roll it over a smooth stick.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the wafer sets.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin batter together once cooked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the wafer brown on the hot iron.
Butter
Greases the iron so the wafer releases cleanly and browns lightly.

The step that matters

Cooking the wafer in the iron. The batter is thin, so heat must reach both sides evenly. Too little heat leaves the wafer pale and soft, while too much heat burns the sugar before the batter sets.

“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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