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Dessert

German Wafers

A crisp wafer made from eggs, sugar, lemon essence, and flour baked into cones.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

German Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the essence of lemon.

  3. Mix in the flour.

Bake and shape

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto greased baking sheets.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until very light brown.

  3. Remove from the oven and shape into cones.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Whipped with sugar to trap air, giving the wafers their light, airy structure.
Ground loaf sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the eggs hold their whipped foam.
Flour
Provides the set structure that holds the wafers together once baked.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs and sugar together for 10 minutes. Beating incorporates air into the eggs, which is what makes the wafers light. Under-beaten batter bakes dense and flat, while the flour should be mixed in gently so the air is not knocked out.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, 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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