Skip to main content
Dessert

Common Savoy Biscuits

Savoy biscuits are small, sweet biscuits made from eggs, powdered sugar, and flour, baked until crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Common Savoy Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. In a small copper saucepan, break the eggs and add the powdered sugar.

  2. Whisk the eggs and sugar until very light, about 30 minutes.

  3. Mix in the sifted flour with a wooden spoon.

Shape and bake

  1. Using a teaspoon, scoop one spoonful of batter and pull it along parchment paper, shaping it into a strip about 3 inches long and ½ inch wide.

  2. Sprinkle some sugar over the biscuits before placing them in a very hot oven (400°F / 200°C).

  3. Watch closely to prevent burning, as they can scorch quickly.

  4. Once done, cut them off the paper while they are still hot.

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 to a light foam that gives the biscuits their airy structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps stabilise the whisked egg foam.
Sifted flour
Provides the starch and protein that set the batter into a firm biscuit.
Sugar for sprinkling
Adds sweetness and a crisp, sugary surface as the biscuits bake.

The step that matters

Baking the piped strips. The batter depends on the air whisked into the eggs, so it should be baked promptly. The biscuits can scorch quickly in a very hot oven, so watch them closely to prevent burning.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes