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Dessert

Biscuits a LA Seine

Biscuits made from rice flour, sugar, marmalade, and eggs, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 ↓

Biscuits a LA Seine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift half a pound of rice flour and half a pound of sugar.

  2. Add the marmalade of any fruit you please and the yolks of six eggs to the sifted mixture.

  3. Beat all together for half an hour.

  4. Whisk the whites of ten eggs to snow.

  5. Whisk the beaten mixture and the whipped egg whites together.

Bake and serve

  1. Put the batter into paper molds.

  2. Powder sugar over the biscuits.

  3. Bake them in a gentle oven until a good colour.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

127Calories
6 gProtein
5 gFat
13 gCarbs

Counts 2 of 3 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 2 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Fruitnot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Frances Crawford. 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. See the original page.

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 + sugartop 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. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 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

Rice flour
Provides the base structure of the cookies once baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown in the oven.
Eggs
Whites whipped to snow lighten the batter, and yolks add richness and structure.
Marmalade
Adds fruit sweetness, moisture and flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Whisk the egg whites to snow and fold them in. Whites must be whipped to stiff, airy foam and then combined gently with the beaten batter. Over-mixing or deflating the foam loses the air that lightens the cookies, so they bake up denser and flatter.

“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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