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Dessert

Italian Water Biscuits

A biscuit made with eggs, powdered sugar, and sifted flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Italian Water Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Break 6 eggs and place the yolks and whites in a copper pan with an equal weight of powdered sugar. Whisk for 30 minutes.

  2. Add 6 more eggs and an equal weight of sifted flour to the mixture. Mix well.

Shape the biscuits

  1. Cut a piece of wood into a round ring, about the size of a large breakfast cup and 1/8 inch thick, with a handle for lifting.

  2. Spoon a tablespoon of batter into the ring and spread it to match the thickness of the wood until filled.

  3. Lift the wood to leave the cake on the paper. Repeat until all batter is used, ensuring they do not touch.

Bake and finish

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Bake for 5 minutes, watching to prevent burning.

  2. Once baked, let them cool completely. Wet the other side of the paper to easily remove the biscuits.

  3. Return the biscuits to the oven to dry and crisp.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whisked eggs trap air and provide the structure that holds the thin biscuits together.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the whisked foam stay stable while it is beaten.
Sifted flour
Provides the starch that sets during baking, giving the biscuits their dry, crisp body.

The step that matters

Baking the thin rounds. The layers are very thin and can scorch quickly, so they must be watched closely. Spacing them apart lets steam escape and keeps them from fusing.

“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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