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Dessert

French Waffles

A sweet batter of butter, sugar, eggs, milk, brandy, lemon peel or mace, flour, and yeast, baked into waffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

French Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the butter and powdered sugar.

  2. Add the egg yolks, milk, brandy, and lemon peel or mace, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and yeast to form a soft dough.

  4. Incorporate the creamed mixture into the dough, adding the beaten egg whites last.

Rise and bake

  1. Beat the dough until it blisters, then let it rise for at least 3 hours.

  2. Bake the waffles as you would German waffles.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Forms the dough's main structure, setting the waffle's body as it cooks.
Yeast
Produces gas during the rise, making the dough light and airy.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter, giving a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and loosens the dough.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning in the cooked waffles.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise fully. Yeast needs time to produce gas and build structure. Rising for the full time, as directed, lets the dough become light; cutting it short leaves waffles dense and heavy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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