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Dessert

Plain Waffles

A simple waffle made with flour, milk, butter, baking powder, salt, and beaten eggs, served with cinnamon and sugar.

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

Make the batter

  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.

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

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Cook the waffles

  1. Preheat and grease the waffle iron thoroughly.

  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 other side.

Serve

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

  2. Serve immediately 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 + 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. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets as the waffle cooks.
Milk or cream
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its liquid base and tenderness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the waffle brown and crisp at the surface.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, lifting the batter so the waffle rises.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Beaten whites trap air that gives the waffles lift. Overmixing deflates them, leaving the waffles dense and flat.

“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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