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Dessert

Lemon Wafers

A light, lemon-flavored wafer made with sugar, flour, egg yolks, baking powder, salt, orange zest, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks with a hand mixer until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the sugar while continuing to beat.

  3. Mix in the lemon juice and flour.

Bake

  1. Drop rounded balls, the size of a hulled walnut, 1½ inches apart on buttered baking sheets.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until lightly browned.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  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. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and structure, helping bind the batter and set as the wafers bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the beaten yolks stay light, and promotes browning in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the wafers together as they bake.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor to the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the wafers rise and turn light.

The step that matters

Beating the egg yolks until creamy. Whipping the yolks with sugar traps air that gives the batter lift. Under-beaten yolks leave dense wafers, so beat until pale and creamy before adding the other ingredients.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

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