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Lemon Wafers
Beat two eggs and mix with them three tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar and flour, the juice of one and the grated peel of half a lemon. Stir the above to mix well, then spread it in small thin cakes on a buttered baking-sheet, place them in a slow oven and bake until slightly colored. When cooked take the cakes out of the oven, roll them, one at a time, round the handle of a wooden spoon, and serve.
This is a tuile batter in miniature — four ingredients, no fat in the batter itself, and a very short window in which the baked wafers can be shaped. Read the last line first: everything hinges on rolling them while they are still hot and pliable.
- The ambiguous measurement"Three tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar and flour" most likely means three of each, which gives a workable thin batter with two eggs. It could also be read as three tablespoons of the two combined; if you are unsure, start with three of each and judge the consistency, which should pour and spread like heavy cream.
- Powdered sugarIn this period "powdered sugar" usually meant granulated sugar ground fine, not the cornstarch-blended confectioners' sugar sold today. Either works here; modern confectioners' sugar dissolves faster and gives a slightly softer wafer.
- Oven temperatureA slow oven is usually reckoned somewhere in the 250-325F range. For wafers this thin, aim at the upper end, around 300-325F: you want them dried and barely tan at the edges, not browned, and a hotter oven will colour the rims before the centres set.
- The baking sheetA buttered sheet is what the recipe assumes, and these wafers stick tenaciously. Parchment or a silicone mat makes the difference between lifting them cleanly and scraping off shards.
- Spread thin, and few at a timeUse about a teaspoon of batter per wafer and spread it to roughly two inches with the back of the spoon. Bake no more than four or five at a time — once they cool they snap instead of bending, and a full sheet will harden before you have rolled the third one.
- RollingLift each hot wafer with a thin offset spatula and wrap it round a wooden spoon handle, seam down, for a few seconds until it holds. Any that have gone brittle can be returned to the oven for fifteen or twenty seconds to soften again.
- Yield and keepingExpect about eighteen to twenty-four wafers. They are at their best within a few hours; store them airtight and away from anything moist, since humidity turns them leathery overnight.
Thin rolled wafers of this kind belong to the French pâtisserie tradition of tuiles and cigarettes russes, shaped hot over a rod or a rolling pin, and wafers of the type were familiar in American hotel kitchens staffed by European-trained cooks. Oscar Tschirky was maître d'hôtel at the Waldorf, which opened in 1893, and his 1896 Cook Book reads as a working reference rather than a book for home cooks. A wafer like this would have been understood as an accompaniment rather than a dish: something to set beside ices, custards and stewed fruit at the close of a long menu.