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Savoy Biscuits

Savoy biscuits are small, sweet biscuits made from eggs, sugar, flour, baked until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Savoy Biscuits

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Savoy Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA very moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Break the eggs into a bowl and add the granulated sugar; beat until thick.

  2. Gradually beat in the dry sifted flour.

Bake and finish

  1. Place teaspoonfuls of the dough on buttered paper in a baking pan.

  2. Bake until light brown.

  3. When cold, brush the undersides of the biscuits with the beaten egg white and press two together.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Whipped to trap air, giving the biscuits their light, airy structure.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the eggs hold their whipped foam.
Dry sifted flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter as the biscuits bake.
Egg white
Brushed on the undersides to bind two biscuits together after baking.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and sugar until thick. Air whipped into the eggs and sugar is what makes these biscuits light. Under-beating leaves them dense, and over-deflating before the flour goes in loses that lift.

“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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