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Dessert

Walnut Wafebs

A baked walnut wafer made with eggs, sugar, flour, and butter.

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 Wafebs

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 into small pieces, but do not chop.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and add the brown sugar, salt, flour, and baking powder. Mix the ingredients together thoroughly.

  3. 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. If desired, roll in powdered sugar immediately after removing from the pan.

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a caramel flavor, and helps the wafers brown.
Walnut meat
Adds crunchy texture and nutty flavor to the wafers.
Flour
Provides a small amount of structure so the wafers hold together.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the batter slightly as it bakes.

The step that matters

Remove from the pan as soon as they leave the oven. Cookies like these firm up as they cool and stick to the pan, so they must be lifted off while still warm and pliable.

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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