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Plain Waffles

A simple waffle made with flour, milk, butter, baking powder, salt, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Plain Waffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the baking powder and salt with the flour.

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  3. Melt the butter and add it to the milk.

Make the batter

  1. Combine the beaten yolks and milk with the flour.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Cook

  1. Preheat and grease the waffle iron.

  2. Pour the batter into the hot waffle iron carefully.

  3. Bake until the edges are set, then turn the waffle iron to bake the second side.

Serve

  1. Stack the waffles on a hot plate, buttering each one generously.

  2. Serve hot with a mixture of cinnamon and sugar.

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 + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

All-purpose flour
Structure: its proteins and starches set during cooking to form the waffle's body.
Milk or cream
Moisture: hydrates the flour to form the batter and adds richness and browning.
Butter
Fat: adds flavour and tenderness and helps the waffle brown and release from the iron.
Baking powder
Rising: releases gas when it reacts with liquid and heat, lightening the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites trap air bubbles that lighten the batter. Stirring or overmixing knocks that air out, leaving dense, flat waffles.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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