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Dessert

Sweet Wafers

A batter of milk, flour, butter, baking powder, egg, and sugar cooked in a greased iron to make sweet wafers.

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 ↓

Sweet Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine milk, flour, butter, baking powder, egg, and sugar.

  2. Mix until the batter is the consistency of cream.

Cook

  1. Grease the iron well before using.

  2. Cook the batter in the greased iron until golden brown.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a crisp, sturdy wafer.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the batter so the wafers puff slightly.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor and helps the wafers brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the wafers and promotes browning in the iron.
Milk
Moistens the flour and makes the batter pourable and tender.

The step that matters

Grease the iron well before using. Sugar and butter in the batter caramelize and stick to hot metal, so a well-greased iron lets the wafers release cleanly without tearing.

“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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