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Dessert

Wafer Cakes

A sweet cake made with flour, brown sugar, eggs, butter, cinnamon, and nutmeg, baked thin in wafer irons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Wafer Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  2. Add the brown sugar and flour, then mix in the melted butter.

  3. Beat the egg whites until frothy and gently fold them into the mixture.

  4. Add cinnamon and nutmeg to taste.

  5. Roll the dough very thin and bake in wafer irons.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 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).

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin dough together as it bakes.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites lighten it so the wafers bake crisp.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the wafers brown.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender bite in the finished wafer.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites gently. The whipped whites trap air that lightens the batter. Overmixing knocks that air out, making the wafers dense rather than light and crisp.

“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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