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Dessert

Pound Cake Wafers

Thin pound cake wafers flavored with nutmeg and caraway, topped with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pound Cake Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

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

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

  3. Add the beaten eggs and nutmeg, and mix well.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then add to the mixture.

  5. Stir in the caraway seeds.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough out thin, cut into rounds, and sprinkle with sugar.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until 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. Nutmeg + carawaytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 trap air, giving the wafers a light, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the wafers rise slightly and stay tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and, sprinkled on top, caramelizes to add browning.

The step that matters

Roll the dough out thin. Thin dough bakes through and crisps into a wafer. Thick pieces stay soft in the centre and may not brown evenly.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Carawaythe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Capersfits 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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