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Dessert

Ginger Wafers

A crisp wafer made from flour, cream, treacle, ginger essence, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Ginger Wafers

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ginger Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour, cream, treacle, ginger essence, butter, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Stir the mixture while boiling for 3 minutes.

Cook the wafers

  1. Heat a copper baking sheet over a charcoal stove until moderately hot.

  2. Drop a tablespoonful of batter onto the baking sheet.

  3. Spread the batter to the size of a small saucer.

  4. As bubbles rise, flatten them with the tip of a spoon.

  5. When the wafers are dry and crisp, detach them carefully with a sharp knife.

Shape

  1. Hand the wafers to someone to curl them on pointed wooden mandrins.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Ginger + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the wafers together as they set.
Single cream
Adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Treacle
Adds sweetness and deep colour, and helps the wafers brown.
Butter
Adds fat, giving the wafers a tender texture and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Spreading and flattening the batter on the hot sheet. The batter must be spread thin while bubbles rise, so the wafers cook evenly and dry out to a crisp texture rather than staying soft or thick in the centre.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, 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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