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Dessert

Wafers

Thin wafers made with orange flower water, flour, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine orange flower water, flour, sugar, and cream.

  2. Beat the mixture well for 30 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat your wafer tongs and pour a little batter to cover the irons.

  2. Bake on a stove until golden, then roll them around a stick.

  3. Allow to cool; they will become crisp and can be served with jellies or tea.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Orange + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,821 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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
Provides the structure that holds the thin batter together as it sets.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the wafers brown to a golden colour.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the wafers a tender, rich texture.
Orange-flower water
Adds a floral aroma that flavours the batter.

The step that matters

Baking until golden on the irons. Wafers are very thin, so they can move from golden to burnt quickly. Enough browning gives flavour and crispness, while overcooking makes them bitter and brittle. Roll them while still warm, since they set firm as they cool.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, cream. 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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