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Graham Wafers

A thin, crisp wafer made from graham flour, white flour, sugar, sour cream, egg, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Graham Wafers

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Graham Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the egg until light.

  2. Combine the egg with all other ingredients in the order given, then mix with a spoon.

  3. Transfer the dough onto a floured board.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough as thin as possible.

  2. Cut into desired shapes and bake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 dough and add richness and structure as they set.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour cream to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the wafers brown during baking.
Graham flour
Provides structure and a nutty, coarse-textured flavour.
White flour
Provides structure so the dough can be rolled thin and hold its cut shapes.

The step that matters

Roll the dough as thin as possible. Thin dough dries out and crisps as it bakes, giving the snap of a wafer. Thicker pieces stay soft and cakey in the centre.

“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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