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Dessert

Wafers À l'Allemande

Thin almond wafers flavored with orange flowers, baked until crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Wafers À l'Allemande

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Mix sliced almonds, caster sugar, orange flowers, and egg white in a bowl to form a paste.

  2. Cover baking sheets with wafer paper, spread with white wax and a little sweet or almond oil.

Bake and shape

  1. Spread the almond mixture as thinly as possible over the prepared sheets and sprinkle with chopped almonds or pistachios.

  2. Bake in a rather hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until nearly done.

  3. Quickly cut into squares, return to the oven for 1 minute, then roll the squares around a stick.

Cool and store

  1. Place the cooled wafers on a sieve and keep covered.

  2. Store wafers in air-tight tins.

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. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Almond + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Sweet almonds
Form the thin, crisp base of the wafer paste.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps it brown and crisp in the oven.
Egg white
Binds the almonds and sugar into a cohesive paste.

The step that matters

Quickly cut into squares, return to the oven for 1 minute, then roll the squares around a stick.. The wafers are pliable only while still warm and soften quickly as they cool, so they must be cut and rolled fast. If they cool and stiffen first, they will crack when shaped.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar, egg. 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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