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Dessert

Tea Lemon Wafers

A light, buttery lemon wafer made by baking batter in wafer irons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tea Lemon Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and mix well.

  3. Beat the eggs until creamy and combine with the butter and sugar mixture.

  4. Add the lemon juice, lemon rind, grated nutmeg, and enough flour to form a stiff batter.

  5. Beat the mixture until smooth and light.

Bake and shape

  1. Heat the wafer irons over a clear fire and lightly grease with butter.

  2. Fill the irons with enough batter, close them, and turn over the fire until brown.

  3. Remove the wafers, dust with powdered sugar, and roll around a smooth stick.

  4. Carefully remove the wafers when cold.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Creams with sugar to give the batter richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and lift to the batter, helping it set in the iron.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves easily into the creamed butter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter together as it bakes.
Lemon juice and rind
Add acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Turn over the fire until brown. Wafers cook quickly between hot irons, and the sugar and butter brown fast. Too little heat leaves them pale and soft, while too much scorches them before they set.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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