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Riband Wafers
Rub three or four lumps of sugar upon two large fresh lemons until all the yellow part is taken off. Crush the sugar to powder, and make the weight up to one pound. Mix with this three-quarters of a pound of fine flour, and add gradually nine eggs, which have been thoroughly beaten, the yolks and whites first separately and afterwards together. Roll the pastry out till it is as thin as a shilling. Stamp it in rounds the size of the top of a tumbler, lay these upon well-buttered tins, and place in a quick oven. When half baked, take the wafers out, roll them round the finger to the form of a scroll, and return them to the oven to crisp. Time to bake, ten to fifteen minutes.
A Victorian wafer built on lemon-scented sugar, no butter and no liquid beyond the eggs. The hinge is speed at the oven door: the rounds only curl while they are hot, so bake a few at a time.
- Lumps of sugar"Lumps" are sugar cubes. Rubbing them over the lemon skin strips the zest and its oil into the sugar, the technique now sold as oleo saccharum. Crush it fine, then make the sugar up to 1 lb, about 2 1/4 cups.
- The rest in modern measureThree-quarters of a pound of fine flour is about 3 cups; eggs of the period were often smaller than today's large, so eight large eggs may serve as a substitute. The mixture is roughly 1 lb sugar to 12 oz flour with no fat at all.
- Dough or batterWith nine eggs and no butter this will behave as a thick, sticky paste rather than a pastry you can roll on the table. Chilling it firm, and rolling between two sheets of baking paper, is the practical route; if it still spreads, expect to spoon and spread thin rounds instead.
- As thin as a shillingA Victorian shilling was around 1.5 mm. Thinner is better here: any thicker and the wafers set soft in the middle and will not crisp on the second bake.
- A quick ovenGenerally taken as about 400-425F. At that heat thin wafers colour at the edges within a few minutes, well short of the ten to fifteen minutes given for the whole operation, so watch rather than time the first tray.
- Half baked, then rolledTake them out when the edges are pale gold and the centres still pliable, and roll them round a finger, a wooden spoon handle or a thin dowel at once. They set brittle within seconds of leaving the tin; a tray that has gone stiff can be put back in the oven for a moment to soften.
- Buttered tinsA well-buttered tin was the usual release, though buttered paper was also used in period kitchens. Parchment or a silicone mat lifts these more reliably, but leave the wafers on the hot sheet, not the mat, once they come out or they cool too fast to curl.
- Batch sizeThe full quantity makes several dozen wafers and demands a fast production line. Halving or quartering it is sensible for a first attempt.
- KeepingThey stay crisp only in a tightly closed tin and go leathery within a day in a humid kitchen. Bake them the day they are wanted.
"Riband" is the older spelling of ribbon, and the name is usually taken to describe the finished shape: a wafer rolled hot into a curl or scroll, thin enough to suggest a twist of ribbon on the dish. Wafers of this kind descend from the medieval wafer-iron trade, where batter was pressed between hinged plates over a fire; by the nineteenth century thin egg-and-sugar pastes baked flat on tins and shaped by hand were also common, though wafer irons remained in use. The same idea produces brandy snaps, French cigarettes russes and the wafers still rolled around ice cream. A very thin, sugar-heavy paste stays flexible while hot and sets rigid as it cools, which is the basis of shaped biscuit work. The lemon sugar at the head of the recipe is a period habit worth noticing too, from an era when bottled extracts were unreliable and the peel of a fresh lemon was a dependable flavouring in the house.