Skip to main content
Dessert

Spice Biscuits

A sweet biscuit made with flour, rice flour, sugar, eggs, butter, spices, baking powder, jam filling, and icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Spice Biscuits

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the all-purpose flour, rice flour, sugar, mixed spices, and baking powder.

  3. Add the eggs and softened butter, and mix until a dough forms.

  4. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into narrow fingers.

Bake and assemble

  1. Place the biscuits on a baking sheet and bake for about 20 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, stick the biscuits together with jam and decorate with icing.

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. Flour + sugartop 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. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Flour + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the dough as it sets in the oven.
Rice flour
Adds a crisp, fine texture to the biscuits.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the biscuits and helps them brown during baking.
Eggs
Bind the dough together and add structure and richness.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the biscuits rise slightly and lighten.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thinly and cutting narrow fingers. Thin, narrow pieces bake evenly and dry out to a crisp texture. Thick pieces stay soft in the centre and may burn at the edges before they are cooked through.

“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.

More spice biscuits recipes

Almond 3 See all 4 →

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesRice PuddingRice Pudding22 recipes