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Dessert

Sweet Wafers

Sweet wafers are thin, crisp pastries made from butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the wafer iron and grease it with butter.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix melted butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and flavoring until smooth.

Cook the wafers

  1. Drop 1 teaspoon of the batter onto the heated iron.

  2. Close the iron and cook until done, then roll the wafer over a stick.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the wafers set.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin wafer together as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the wafers brown as they cook.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the batter cook smoothly and release from the iron.

The step that matters

Cook until done, then roll while hot. Wafers set and firm as they cool, so rolling them over a stick needs to happen while they are still warm and pliable. Left too long, they become brittle and crack.

“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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