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Dessert

Chocolate Wafers

Chocolate wafers are thin cakes made with sugar, butter, flour, eggs, chocolate, baking soda, baking powder, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Chocolate Wafers

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs and milk, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the grated chocolate.

  4. Sift the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda together, then add to the mixture.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough out on a well-floured surface until thin.

  2. Cut into desired shapes and place on a baking sheet.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the wafers a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and, creamed with butter, helps it turn light and fluffy.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the wafers.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the shaped wafers together.
Grated chocolate
Adds chocolate flavor and color to the dough.
Cream of tartar
Acid that reacts with baking soda to make the wafers rise and stay tender.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thin. Thin dough needs enough flour on the surface to keep it from sticking, and rolling it evenly to a uniform thickness makes the wafers bake at the same rate, so they come out crisp rather than unevenly browned or soft.

“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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