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Dessert

Wafer Cakes

A batter of powdered sugar, butter, eggs, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, and lemon oil or rose-water is poured into a heated iron to make wafer cakes.

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 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, and ensure the batter is smooth and lump-free.

Bake the wafers

  1. Heat the wafer iron on both sides without overheating.

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

  3. Pour in 2 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
Provide structure and lift when beaten into the batter, helping the wafers hold their shape.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing tenderness and browning to the wafers.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it beat up light and creamy with the butter.
Sifted flour
Forms the stiff batter's structure, setting the wafers as they cook.

The step that matters

Heat the wafer iron without overheating. If the iron is too hot, the outside of the batter sets and browns before the inside cooks, so the wafers can scorch or stick. Greasing the iron before each wafer also helps prevent 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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