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Dessert

Neapolitan Biscuits

A sweet biscuit made with flour, sugar, almonds, eau de rose, butter, and egg whites, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Neapolitan Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Blanch and dry the almonds, then pound them in a mortar with ⅓ cup eau de rose to a fine paste.

  2. Add the butter and sugar, stirring until smooth.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a pan and stir in the flour until well combined.

  4. Let the mixture stand in a cool place overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thickness and cut into shapes with a biscuit cutter.

  2. Place the cakes on wafer paper and bake on iron plates in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Pounded almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the biscuit.
Flour
Gives the dough structure so the cut shapes hold their form.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the biscuits and helps them brown in the oven.
Egg whites
Add moisture and help bind the dough together.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand in a cool place overnight. Resting lets the flour and fats hydrate and firm up, so the dough rolls and cuts cleanly instead of sticking or spreading in the oven.

“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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