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Dessert

Wafer Cakes

A sweet batter made with powdered sugar, butter, eggs, flour, spices, and lemon or rose water, baked in a wafer iron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Wafer Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix together the powdered sugar and butter.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and beat the mixture until very light.

  3. Stir in enough sifted flour to make a stiff batter.

  4. Add the nutmeg, cinnamon, and oil of lemon or rose water.

  5. Ensure the batter is smooth and lump-free.

Bake the wafers

  1. Heat the wafer iron on both sides, but do not overheat.

  2. Grease the inside of the iron with butter on a cloth before each wafer.

  3. Pour in two large spoonfuls of batter for each wafer.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs trap air, giving the batter lightness and helping the wafers rise.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it adds richness and tenderness and helps the batter hold air.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the butter, adding sweetness and a fine, smooth texture.
Sifted flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a stiff, crisp wafer.

The step that matters

Do not overheat the wafer iron. Too much heat sets and browns the outside of the batter before the inside cooks, leading to scorched, unevenly cooked wafers. Greasing before each wafer keeps them from sticking.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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