Skip to main content
Dessert

Wheat Crisps

A crisp wafer made from cream, wheat, sugar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Wheat Crisps

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix cream, fine granulated wheat, sugar, and salt.

  2. Add flour gradually until a stiff dough forms.

  3. Knead the dough well and roll it out thin like a wafer.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut into small rounds using a cutter.

  2. Bake on ungreased baking sheets in a very hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until crisp.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Cream + wheattop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together681 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the dough and helping the crisps brown.
Fine granulated wheat
Provides the grain base and structure that gives the crisps their body.
Flour
Builds the stiff dough structure so it can be rolled thin and hold its shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and promotes browning during baking.

The step that matters

Roll the dough thin and bake until crisp. Thin dough dries out and crisps in a hot oven, while thick dough stays soft inside. Baking until crisp, rather than only until set, ensures the crisps stay crunchy once cooled.

“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.

You might also like