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Waffeln — Waffles or Gaufres

A batter of butter, flour, eggs, milk, and salt is cooked in a waffle iron and served with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Waffeln — Waffles or Gaufres

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Alternately stir in 1 tablespoon of flour and an egg until all flour and eggs are used.

  3. Thin the batter with lukewarm milk and add salt, stirring thoroughly for 20 minutes.

Cook the waffles

  1. Preheat the waffle iron and grease it with butter or bacon fat.

  2. Fill the deep side of the iron with batter and close it slowly.

  3. Hold over a clear fire, turning after 1-2 minutes until both sides are a delicate brown.

  4. Knock the iron to release the waffles and sift powdered sugar and cinnamon over them.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter and greases the iron for browning.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the waffles together as they set.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the iron.
Milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Turning the waffles at 1-2 minutes. Turning too late can scorch the outside before the centre sets, while turning too early can tear the waffle. Watching for an even, delicate brown on both sides signals that the batter has set and the surface has browned through the Maillard reaction.

“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.

More waffles recipes

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