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Breakfast

Plain Raised Waffles

A simple batter of flour, milk, yeast, eggs, and butter, left to rise overnight and cooked in a waffle iron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Plain Raised Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Scald the milk and let it cool.

  2. Rub the butter into the flour, then add the salt, cooled milk, and yeast.

  3. Beat the mixture well for 3 minutes, cover, and let it stand in a warm place overnight.

Finish and cook

  1. In the morning, beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  2. Add the yolks to the batter, then fold in the whites gently.

  3. Let the batter stand for 15 minutes before cooking in a waffle iron.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the waffles together as they cook.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, and the separately beaten whites add lightness.
Yeast
Ferments the overnight batter, producing gas that leavens the waffles.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor and helps browning in the iron.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Whipped whites hold air that gives lightness. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving dense, flat waffles.

“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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