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Dessert

Cinnamon Blow Biscuits

A light biscuit made with sugar, flour, egg whites, and flavoring, baked until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Cinnamon Blow Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slack oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine sugar and flour.

  3. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  4. Fold the egg whites into the sugar and flour mixture.

  5. Add essences for flavor.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into round or oval biscuits on parchment paper.

  2. Bake in the oven until firm and lightly colored.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Flour and egg 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the biscuits a light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the biscuits together as they bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the biscuits and helps them brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites into the sugar and flour mixture. Folding gently keeps the air whipped into the egg whites. Stirring vigorously would deflate the foam, leaving denser, flatter biscuits.

“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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