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Dessert

Geneva Wafers

Thin, crisp wafers made from eggs, butter, flour, and powdered sugar, served with preserve and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Geneva Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Whisk the eggs in a basin.

  2. Beat the butter to a cream and stir it into the eggs.

  3. Gradually add the flour and powdered sugar, mixing well.

Bake and shape

  1. Butter a baking sheet and drop a teaspoonful of the mixture onto it, leaving space between each.

  2. Bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) until half done.

  3. Roll the wafers up and insert a small wedge of bread or piece of wood to keep their shape.

  4. Return to the oven until crisp.

Fill and serve

  1. Before serving, remove the bread, add a spoonful of preserve in the widest end, and fill with whipped cream.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the wafers together as they bake.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until half done, then roll while still pliable. Wafers must be shaped while still soft; once they cool and crisp they will crack. Baking in a cool oven keeps them from browning too fast before they are shaped.

“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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