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Dessert

Mustard Wafers

A crisp, sweet and mustard‑flavored wafer made from butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour, baking soda, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Mustard Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Sift together flour, baking soda, and mustard.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks, then alternate adding the milk and flour mixture.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and finish

  1. Roll the dough thin and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Sprinkle with granulated sugar when taken from the oven.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter
Adds fat that makes the wafers tender and rich in flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin wafers together after baking.
Egg
Adds structure and richness to the dough; the whites are folded in for lightness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to help it rise and brown.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and makes the dough workable.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thin. Thin dough bakes quickly and evenly into crisp wafers; thick dough stays soft in the center and may brown unevenly before it dries out.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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