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Oat Meal Wafers

Thin, crisp oatmeal wafers made from oatmeal, flour, brown sugar, butter and spice, rolled and cut before baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Oat Meal 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. Mix the oat meal and flour together.

  2. Rub the butter and brown sugar into the mixture until well combined.

  3. Add the ground spice, salt, and baking soda.

  4. Moisten slightly with a little cold water.

  5. Add more flour as needed to achieve a firm dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out a small piece of dough as thin as possible.

  2. Cut into shapes with a sharp fluted cutter.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Oatmeal (in the method)
Provides the bulk and the slightly nubbly, crisp texture of the wafers.
Flour
Gives structure and binds the dough so it holds a firm, rollable shape.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the wafers brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness and helps bind the dough together.
Baking soda
Reacts to lighten the dough and promotes browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Roll the dough as thin as possible. Thin pieces bake through and crisp, while thick pieces stay soft and chewy in the middle. Thin dough also browns evenly, since moisture leaves it quickly in the hot oven.

“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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