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Dessert

Art of Making Wafers

Thin biscuits made from flour, egg whites, yeast, and gum water, baked over charcoal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Art of Making Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour, egg whites, and yeast until well combined.

  2. Add gum water to achieve a proper consistency.

Spread and bake

  1. Spread the batter on tin plates or a flat iron form to the desired thinness.

  2. Bake over a charcoal fire until done.

Cut and finish

  1. Cut out wafers into small or large rounds.

  2. For colored wafers, mix coloring agents into the batter before spreading.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg 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

Wheaten flour
Forms the main structure of the wafer once baked.
Egg whites
Provide binding and structure, helping the thin batter set as it bakes.
Yeast
Adds a slight rise and a lighter texture to the batter.

The step that matters

Spreading the batter to the desired thinness. Thin spreading lets the batter bake through evenly and dry into a crisp wafer. Thick batter stays soft and bakes unevenly, so the thinness should be consistent across the form.

“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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