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Dessert

Lemon Wafers

A crisp, lemon-flavored wafer made by spreading a lemon-sugar-egg white mixture on wafer paper and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Squeeze the lemons into a large bowl.

  2. Add powdered sugar until the mixture is a fine, smooth thickness.

  3. Mix in the egg white with a wooden spoon until well combined.

Spread and cut

  1. Lay sheets of wafer paper on a baking sheet.

  2. Spread a spoonful of the mixture over each sheet using a knife.

  3. Cut the sheets into 8 to 12 pieces.

Bake and store

  1. Place the pieces across a stick in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Remove them when they start to curl, then set them upright in a sieve.

  3. Leave them in the oven for one day to curl more.

  4. Store the wafers in a dry place.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Lemons
Provide the juice that gives the wafers their bright, sour flavour.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and, when mixed in, thickens the juice into a smooth spreadable paste.
Egg white
Adds protein that helps the mixture bind and set as it dries in the oven.
Wafer paper
Forms the thin edible base that holds the spread mixture and bakes into the crisp wafer.

The step that matters

Removing the wafers as they start to curl. The wafers are still pliable when they first curl. As they cool they firm up and hold that shape, so removing them at the right moment sets the curl. Leaving them too long can make them brittle.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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