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Peppermint Wafers

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and peppermint match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,583 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Peppermint Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Juice the lemons into a bowl.

  2. Add powdered sugar to taste.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg white until very white.

  4. Combine the egg white with the lemon juice and sugar mixture.

  5. Add a few drops of peppermint oil and mix well.

  6. Finish the mixture as you would for lemon wafers.

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. Lemon + pepperminttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + pepperminttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,082 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Swap the peppermint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Peppermintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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