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Dessert

Yarmouth Biscuits

A sweet biscuit made with currants, powdered sugar, flour, butter, and eggs.

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

Yarmouth Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the currants

  1. Wash and pick the currants clean, then dry them well.

  2. Toss the currants with a little flour to coat them.

Make and shape the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the currants, powdered sugar, sifted flour, and butter.

  2. Break the eggs into the mixture and mix until it forms a paste.

  3. Roll the paste out on a floured surface to ⅛ inch thick.

  4. Cut into desired shapes.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the biscuits on sheets of paper on a baking tray.

  3. Bake until just browned, being careful not to overbake.

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 + 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Adds fat that makes the biscuits rich and tender as they bake.
Eggs
Bind the paste and add structure and richness to the biscuits.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the shaped biscuits together.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps give the biscuits a fine, tender crumb.
Currants
Add fruity sweetness and chewy pockets throughout the biscuits.

The step that matters

Bake until just browned. Baking past light browning dries out the butter-rich dough and makes the biscuits hard and brittle, so they should be removed as soon as the edges just turn golden.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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