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Dessert

Wafers Without Yeast

A crisp wafer made from clarified butter, egg yolks, sugar, flour, cream, and whipped egg whites, baked without yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Wafers Without Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Rub the clarified butter into a cream.

  2. Add the egg yolks and sifted sugar, mixing well.

  3. Slowly incorporate the fine flour and cream.

  4. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Heat the wafer irons and brush them with butter.

  2. Pour the batter into the irons and bake until golden.

  3. Sprinkle sugar over the wafers when done.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Clarified butter
Adds rich fat and flavour, and helps the wafers crisp and brown.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the batter, helping it set into a tender wafer.
Fine flour
Provides the structure that holds the wafer batter together as it sets.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the batter for a thin, tender wafer.
Sugar
Sweetens the wafers and helps them brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Stiff whites trap air that lifts the batter. Overmixing deflates them, leaving dense, flat wafers, so fold gently until just combined.

“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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