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Dessert

Seed Wafers

Thin cakes made from butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and caraway seeds, baked until crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Seed Wafers

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter with the sugar until smooth.

  2. Beat the eggs very light and mix them into the creamed butter and sugar.

  3. Add enough flour to form a soft dough and mix in the caraway seeds.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough into a very thin paste and cut into round cakes.

  2. Brush each cake with egg white and sift powdered sugar on top.

  3. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 10 minutes or until crisp.

  4. Let them cool in the baking tins to prevent breaking.

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 + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Creams with sugar to give the wafers a rich, tender, short texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown and crisp in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the creamed butter and sugar and add structure to the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the soft dough together once rolled and baked.
Caraway seeds
Add a distinctive aromatic flavour throughout the wafers.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough very thin. A very thin dough bakes quickly and becomes crisp rather than soft. If it is rolled too thick, the centre stays doughy and the wafers will not crisp properly in the short bake.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, 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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