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Dessert

Orange Wafers

A light, sweet wafer flavored with orange flower water, made from butter, sugar, flour, milk, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Orange Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter in the warm milk.

  2. Sift together the sugar, flour, and salt.

  3. Mix the sifted ingredients with the egg yolk.

  4. Gradually add the milk and orange flower water, mixing well.

Cook and shape

  1. Heat and grease the wafer irons.

  2. Fill each iron with a spoonful of batter and close it.

  3. Cook over the fire, turning occasionally until the wafer is done.

  4. Roll the wafers on small, round sticks and dry on a sieve.

Serve

  1. Serve with ice cream.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Flour + eggtop 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
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the wafers crisp and brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and promotes browning as the wafers cook.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin batter together when cooked.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the batter into a smooth mixture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that thins the batter to a pourable consistency.
Orange flower water
Adds a delicate floral citrus aroma to the batter.

The step that matters

Cook over the fire, turning occasionally until the wafer is done. Wafers can burn quickly or stay pale and soft if heat is uneven. Turning the irons helps the batter cook evenly and brown without scorching. Rolling them while still warm and pliable is also needed before they set.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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