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Dessert

Walnut Wafers

A crisp, sweet wafer made with walnuts, sugar, eggs, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Walnut Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Break up the walnut meat without chopping it.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  3. Add the brown sugar, salt, flour, and baking powder to the eggs and mix thoroughly. Fold in the walnut pieces.

Bake and serve

  1. Drop a teaspoonful of the mixture onto a well-buttered baking pan.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until brown.

  3. Remove from the pan as soon as they leave the oven.

  4. Optionally, roll in powdered sugar before they cool.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Walnut meat
Provides the bulk of the wafer and its nutty flavour and crunch.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give the wafers their structure.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the wafers brown in the oven.
Flour
Gives the batter a little body so the wafers hold their shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lighten the batter slightly as it bakes.

The step that matters

Remove from the pan as soon as they leave the oven. Sugar-rich wafers harden as they cool and stick firmly to the pan, so lifting them off while still warm prevents breaking and sticking.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Pecansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, sugar, flour, butter. 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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