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Egg Biscuit

A yeast-leavened biscuit made with eggs, milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Egg Biscuit

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the melted butter, dissolved yeast, salt, and 3 cups of flour in a bowl.

  2. Let it rise overnight in a covered bowl.

  3. In the morning, add the beaten eggs and the remaining flour.

  4. Let it rise for another hour or longer.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough into a sheet almost 1 inch thick.

  2. Cut into round cakes.

  3. Place them in a floured baking pan.

  4. Let the cakes rise for 30 minutes.

  5. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 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

Eggs
Add richness, structure and a tender crumb to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the dough.
Yeast
Produces gas during rising, leavening the dough so the biscuits become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds softness and browning from its milk sugars.

The step that matters

Second rise after adding the eggs. The dough needs enough time to rise again after the eggs and remaining flour are worked in, because yeast gas trapped in the gluten network is what makes the cakes light. Rising too briefly leaves them dense.

“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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