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Dessert

Italian Wafers

Italian wafers are thin, crisp cookies made from a batter of sugar, flour, eggs, milk, butter, and orange‑flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Italian Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine flour, sugar, salt, orange-flower water, eggs, and milk in a pan.

  2. Mix vigorously with a wooden spoon, then add melted butter.

  3. Continue mixing the batter for another 10 minutes.

Heat the irons

  1. Heat the wafer irons over a charcoal stove, turning them frequently for even heating.

  2. Rub the inside of the hot irons with a brush dipped in clarified butter.

  3. Pour a tablespoon of butter into the bottom of the irons.

  4. Close the irons.

  5. Use the first wafer to clean the irons and check their heat.

  6. Adjust the temperature as needed for subsequent wafers.

Bake and roll

  1. Bake the wafers on both sides until light fawn in color.

  2. Immediately roll the baked wafers around a stick measuring about 5 inches long and 1 inch in diameter.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 as the wafers set in the hot irons.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter, setting as the wafers bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the wafers brown to a light golden color.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and greases the irons so the wafers release cleanly.
Milk
Provides liquid that makes the batter pourable and adds tenderness.

The step that matters

Immediately roll the baked wafers. Wafers become brittle as they cool, so they must be rolled while still hot and pliable or they will crack.

Swap the orange

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

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

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