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Chocolate Wafers

Thin baked wafers made from eggs, butter, flour, sugar and grated chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocolate Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, rub together the butter and flour.

Make the batter

  1. In another bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together.

  2. Add the grated chocolate to the egg mixture.

  3. Reserve nearly 1 cup of the egg-chocolate mixture for sprinkling.

  4. Combine the butter-flour mixture with the egg-chocolate mixture.

Finish and bake

  1. Sprinkle the reserved sugar and chocolate mixture over the top before baking.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the wafers together as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, crisp texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the wafers rise.
Cream of tartar
Supplies acidity that activates the baking soda and stabilizes the batter.
Chocolate
Gives the wafers their main flavor and darkens them as they bake.

The step that matters

Combine the butter-flour mixture with the egg-chocolate mixture. Fold gently and only until combined. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour and knocks out the air from the beaten eggs, which makes the wafers tough and flat.

“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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