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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

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

  2. Rub a little flour among the currants to coat them.

  3. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and place parchment paper on baking sheets.

Make and shape the dough

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

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

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

  4. Cut out shapes as desired.

Bake

  1. 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

Currants
Add fruit pieces and chewy bursts of sweetness throughout the biscuit.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dough and gives it a fine, tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the paste together and lets it be rolled and cut.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness in the finished biscuit.
Eggs
Bind the mixture into a paste and add richness and structure.

The step that matters

Bake until just browned. Overbaking dries out the biscuit and turns it hard, because the sugar and butter brown quickly and little moisture remains to keep the crumb tender.

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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