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Baking

Gaufres a LA Vanille

A vanilla-flavored waffle batter made with flour, sugar, eggs, butter, vanilla essence, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Gaufres a LA Vanille

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and sugar.

  2. Stir in the eggs one by one.

  3. Melt the butter in ½ cup of water and add to the mixture.

  4. Beat until you have a light batter, adding a little milk if necessary to achieve a slightly thicker consistency than pancake batter.

Cook the waffles

  1. Heat the wafer irons or tongs and butter the inside surfaces.

  2. Place 1 tablespoon of batter in the iron, close it, and bake over a fire, turning frequently for even color.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vanilla + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 waffle together once baked.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the waffle structure as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the waffles brown and release from the irons.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the batter and promotes browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Turning the waffle over the fire. Turning frequently keeps heat even on both sides, so the waffle cooks through and browns evenly instead of scorching in spots.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

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